THE BADDEST BRIDE IN TEXAS

by Maggie Shayne

Chelsea arrived on their heels. They hadn't heard her pull up, because she'd left her car near where they'd left the truck, and walked in the rest of the way.

  "It's gotta be that Phillip Carr," she whispered, crouching beside them.

  Adam was so startled he damn near fell over.

  "She's right," Penny said.

  Adam swung his head around to see Penny and Ben creeping nearer, and, behind them, Wes and Taylor bringing up the rear. "How did you all know we were here?" he asked.

  "We didn't," Ben said. "We came looking for Carr. We found the will, Adam, and it's set up so that if something happens to Kirsten, Carr inherits the works."

  Wes nodded. "So that's why. I figured it was him when I found out he'd been stockpiling sleeping pills. So what's the game plan?"

  "He's got Kirsten in there," Adam said slowly. He looked at his family members, one by one.

  "Then let's go in and get her out!" Jessi said.

  "No, wait. There's something you need to know first." Adam licked his lips, swallowed hard. "Jessi, Wes, Ben … Kirsten told me why she married Cowan in the first place. And it's … it's liable to change your minds about her, once you know the truth."

  "He was holding something over her," Ben said. "She confided that much to me a long time ago, but she would never say what."

  Adam nodded. "She told me. And I have to tell you. It's … about the accident that killed our parents…"

  Ben, Jessi and Wes exchanged stunned looks. But they all stayed silent and listened intently while Adam spoke. He told them everything Kirsten had told him. He told them his reaction. And he told them that he wouldn't blame them if they wanted to walk away from this rescue now that they knew the truth.

  No one said a word for a long moment, and it was Jessi who finally spoke up. "Do you think our mama would have held any of this against Kirsten?"

  "No," Ben said softly. "And our daddy wouldn't have turned his back on a girl in trouble, either. She was a kid, Adam. She was a kid."

  Adam nodded and met Wes's eyes. "What about you?"

  Wes drew a slow breath. "I'm resisting the urge to knock you on your backside, Adam. For walking out on her."

  "Amen to that," Jessi said.

  "What are we waiting for?" Garrett asked finally. "That girl in there is family."

  Jessi lifted her brows and looked from Garrett to Adam. "Is she?"

  "Yeah," Adam said. "Yeah, she is."

  "Hot damn," Jessi said. "Then let's get our butts in there and get her out."

  Everyone spoke in agreement. Adam choked back tears. "Thanks, you guys."

  "Enough, already," Wes said. "What's the plan?"

  Kirsten's hand moved a half beat behind Phillip's commands. His harshly spoken words seemed to go directly from his lips to the pen in her hand, without bothering to make a pit stop at her brain. She didn't know what she scrawled across the page, or even if it would be legible when she finished. She didn't care. Her body was still shuddering with residual electricity. Tremors worked up her spine and slammed into the base of her skull every once in a while. The discomfort had eased up a whole lot, though, once those sleeping pills had decided to kick in full force. Their effect was numbing. And she was grateful for it at this point.

  Her head felt like lead. Her limbs heavy, the pen like a log in her hand.

  "Sign it."

  She blinked up at Phillip, then shook herself and stared down at the uneven words dancing drunkenly across the page. Her vision was none too clear. "I killed my husband and find I can't live without him. The guilt of what I have done is driving me insane. There's only one way out. One way to atone. And that is by following my Joseph to the grave."

  Narrowing her eyes on the sloppy words, she felt her lips pull into a grimace. "I wouldn't follow that bastard inside if it were raining out." But her words sounded funny. The vowels slurred, and the consonants didn't make the trip to her ears or feel as if they were happening on her lips. Her s-words were lisped, as if she had gaps in her teeth.

  "Sign it, Kirsten."

  She threw the pen down on the table.

  Phillip picked up his stun gun and flicked the switch, and Kirsten cried out automatically, flinching back into her chair so hard it tipped over. She crashed to the floor and lay there, closing her eyes, wishing for a miracle.

  Phillip didn't pick her up. He came closer, leaned over her with the crackling little torture device, and her eyes flew open when she heard it. The ropes binding her upper arms and waist to the back of the chair pulled tighter as she tried to move away. They cut into her ankles as she pulled against them. He leaned closer, closer, the nose of that horrible device hovering a hairbreadth from her shoulder. Tears streamed, and sobs wrenched at her sternum. "P-please … I'll sign it. J-just give me the pen."

  Smiling, Phillip backed off. He gave the chair a kick, so it tipped to the side. Then he knelt, shoving the paper onto the floor near her hand, sticking the pen between her thumb and forefinger. Barely able to see through her tears, she scratched her name onto the bottom of the sheet. Phillip yanked the paper away so fast she barely saw it move.

  He turned away from her. The pen was still in her hand. Kirsten maneuvered it into her sleeve, pushing it up farther and farther until it was out of sight. Then she thought it might not have mattered. He was paying very little attention to her now. Instead, he was pacing. Pacing, with the note in his hand, reading it over, and thinking.

  Of how he would kill her, she supposed.

  Then he stopped. "More pills would be simplest, of course, but it would take too long. They'll be looking for you soon." Again he began pacing. "And they can't find you here."

  Then suddenly he came to where she and the chair lay toppled on the floor, reached down and yanked her upright. The tugging hurt her arm, but she was beyond caring about that. Phillip crouched behind her to untie the ropes. "The house," he told her. "The very room where Joseph died. Using the same gun would be nice. Dramatic, you know? But of course, the police have that. Still, this will be almost as good. We'll make it … poetic."

  He freed the ropes from around her ankles, jerked her to her feet and pulled her with him to the door. She staggered, feet feeling oversized and clumsy as the blood rushed back into them. They prickled and stung. She tripped. And still he kept her moving through the door and toward the outside stairway. Frantically, she searched the driveway. Why wasn't anyone coming for her?

  Because she had no one. No one who cared, anyway. Adam hated her, and if he'd told his family what she'd done, then they all must feel the same by now. Even big, sweet Ben. Even Penny, who'd been her best friend. Odd that she'd once thought of them, all of them, as the next best thing to her own family. Odd that she'd kept that feeling alive all this time, even though she'd been estranged from them.

  This time it would be permanent.

  "You know, in some primitive cultures it was common to send a man's wife to the grave with him. I don't imagine they always went without … assistance, either." Phillip grinned at her, and she knew he was insane. But not with any true mental illness. Just with greed. A greed she still didn't understand.

  Surrounding his second-floor garage apartment was a catwalk. A narrow redwood deck that bordered Phillip's living quarters on all four sides. It was connected to an outside staircase that led to the ground. There were indoor stairs, as well, so he could go directly from his apartment to the spacious four-car garage below if need be.

  They stood now on the catwalk, Kirsten clinging to the rail and battling dizziness, Phillip clinging to Kirsten.

  And all of a sudden a voice came from below.

  "You'd best stop right where you are, Carr. And let the lady go."

  Phillip clenched her tighter, reflexively pulling her flush to his chest like a shield as he searched for the owner of that voice.

  "Adam?" Kirsten cried. "Adam! Be careful, Adam, he has a gun!" She tried to see him on the ground below but barely caught a glimpse of his strong body before Phillip tugged her away from the railin
g.

  His hand clapped over her mouth, silencing her. He pressed his back to the wall and eased toward the door. But when he did it was flung open, and Wes Brand stood there looking dark and menacing. He'd come up from the garage, Kirsten realized.

  "Do what my brother says, pal," Wes said softly. He had a bowie knife in his hand and a steely glint in his eyes. "Let her go."

  Phillip jerked backward, tugging her around a corner. The outside stairs came into view. But at the bottom of them stood another Brand. Big, blond Ben, coming slowly upward.

  Trapped. Phillip had to let her go now. There was no way out for him. He was trapped.

  Or was he?

  Phillip pulled her with him again, rounding another corner. She glimpsed more people on the ground. Lash and Jessi and Penny. And before anyone could guess what Phillip was going to do, he yanked open a window and dived back inside, carrying her with him. They hit the floor hard and rolled. She heard Garrett's voice from outside shouting, "They're back in the apartment!" She heard the door crash open as someone, probably Wes, charged inside. But Phillip was already springing to his feet, tugging her through a door, locking it behind him and then hauling her up a steep, dark set of stairs that led to the A-shaped attic above the apartment.

  Dust. Cobwebs. Utter darkness. They might have thought to place men in the garage below, on the ground and on the stairs, but the Brands would not have thought of this.

  Phillip hauled her through the trapdoor at the top of the attic stairs, then slammed the trapdoor down. He tugged her farther. Moving backward across the attic all the way to the far wall, watching that trapdoor all the way.

  His back reached the far wall, and Kirsten glimpsed the last set of rickety steps, these so steep they seemed more like a ladder than a stairway. They had to lead to the roof. There was nowhere else to go. And then she realized … they went to the widow's walk, at the very peak. Her knees went weak at the thought of the height.

  At that same moment the trapdoor rose upward.

  Adam's head poked through.

  "Oh, God, Adam…" It was so good just to see his face. She felt it had been forever, when in fact it had been only a couple of hours since he'd left her. She was weak, dizzy, hurting, and yet overwhelmed at this chance to look into his blue eyes once more.

  "Are you okay?" Adam asked her.

  She nodded. "Adam, I—"

  "Shut up!" Phillip's gun pressed hard to Kirsten's sternum, right between her breasts, barrel slanted upward. If he squeezed the trigger just then, she thought, terrified, the bullet would rip an inclining path of hell from her chest to her throat and probably exit through the back of her head. She wouldn't stand a chance.

  "You just get back down there," Phillip said to Adam. "You just go, or I'll have to kill her."

  "Now, you know I can't do that." Adam came very slowly up, holding up both hands, making no threatening gestures. "I'm unarmed, see?"

  "I don't give a damn! Get out or I'll kill her now. Is that what you want?"

  "Now, what good is that gonna do you, Phillip? Hmm? It won't get you Cowan's fortune. Not with so many witnesses here to testify that it was murder."

  "I don't care. I don't care! And you shouldn't either, Brand. Don't you know what she did? Don't you know she's the one who killed your parents? I was there, I saw it!"

  "I know. I know. But that was an accident." He took a step closer. "She was a kid. And it was a long time ago, Phil."

  "If I were you, I'd want her to die for that. I'd want her to pay."

  "Oh, she's paid." Adam found Kirsten's eyes, held them with his. "She's paid in spades for something that was never her fault to begin with."

  She blinked as pain rose up to engulf her.

  "You … you can forgive her for what she did?"

  "Of course I can," Adam said, still holding her eyes, his own gleaming. "See, I've got no choice there, Phillip. I love her. Always have."

  Kirsten's knees buckled. She slid downward, but Phillip yanked her upright again. Tears flooded her eyes, and she parted her lips to speak, to tell Adam how much she loved him, how sorry she was. But no sound came from her lips. She couldn't even feel them. The pills. The electrocution. She wasn't even going to be conscious for much longer. She couldn't speak. But she clung to Adam with her eyes and prayed he could see her feelings in them. She tried to mouth the words I love you. I'm sorry.

  He nodded almost imperceptibly, sending her the same unspoken message in return. "Listen, Carr—" Adam began.

  "Don't call me that!"

  Adam went silent. Kirsten tried to fight her way through the fog in her brain to understanding. "B-but it's your name," she whispered, surprised to hear the rasp come from her lips. A moment ago she'd tried to speak and had been unable to. Now words were coming out without her permission.

  "It's not my name!" Phillip said. "My name is Cowan. Cowan, dammit, but Joseph would never acknowledge that. He would never give me my due. I thought you would, Kirsten. I really thought you would. But you couldn't, could you? You're just like her."

  She blinked. Just like who? She was never certain if she spoke the words aloud or just thought them inside her own mind.

  "You hate me like she did. God, you even look just like her. That's why Joseph had to have you, you know. That's why he started this whole damned scheme. Because of what she did to him."

  Adam came up the rest of the way, slowly lowering the trapdoor, his eyes on Kirsten's briefly, as if to reassure her.

  "She said she loved him, and then she left him," Phillip went on. "And six months later she left me on his doorstep. But he wouldn't claim me as his own. No, not Joe Cowan. He named me Carr, said when I grew up I could be his driver. Big joke. Big effing joke. But I never laughed. He sent me off to be raised by strangers, my beloved father. While my mother went to the next man on her list and married him. But it didn't matter, she left him, too. The second he had his first heart attack. The second she realized he wasn't perfect. No man could ever be good enough for our mother, could he, Kirsten?"

  Kirsten's head was buzzing. Adam came closer, using Phillip's distraction to his advantage.

  "I wish I'd been the baby she'd kept, instead of you, Kirsten. I really do. I wish she had stayed with Joseph and raised me the way she should have. None of this would have happened if you'd never been born."

  The light flashed on in her brain, and it was blinding. For just a moment the shock cut through the drugs and the pain. "My God, are you talking about my mother?"

  "Our mother." Phillip smiled sickly. "Sis."

  Then he jerked his head and his gun toward Adam. "Stop it! Stop trying to get closer!"

  Adam froze, hands high. "Look, we can talk this out. You don't want to do this, Phillip. You don't want to hurt your own sister."

  "She hates me! Just like our mother did!" Phillip shrieked. His gun barrel jammed up into the soft underside of her chin now, his hand trembling violently as he backed up the steep, ladderlike stairs, pulling her with him. All that lived at the top was the widow's walk. Three stories up. Sweet heaven.

  "Joseph told me all the things you used to say about me, Kirsten. How you called me a bastard. How you swore you'd get everything he had and throw me out without a dime once he was gone. He told me everything!"

  "He lied to you, Phillip," Kirsten whispered, fighting hard to stay cognizant, to cling to the ability to speak. "He lied. He was a liar, you know that. I didn't even know you were my … I didn't even know."

  Phillip shook his head. "At least he let me live here. Gave me a decent job. A home. At least he was my friend. That's more than you ever were."

  "He was never anyone's friend, Phillip," Adam said.

  "He was the only one I had." Tears streamed down Phillip's cheeks now. "He was my father. You don't have any idea how much it hurt when he made me kill him."

  "Then why did you do it?" Adam asked, his voice accusing. He was getting desperate to stop Phillip. Kirsten could see it in his eyes. The closer they got to the door at the
top, the one that opened directly onto the widow's walk, the more distressed Adam looked.

  "He made me," Phillip moaned. "He had a gun pointed at me, and he put another one in my hand, laid the barrel up against his forehead and kept telling me to do it. Said he'd kill me if I didn't. Called me a weakling and a coward and a fatherless bastard. Said I was so worthless even my own mother hadn't wanted me. Told me the only way I'd ever have anything in my life was if I did what he said, exactly as he said. Pull the trigger, take his gun, leave the other one. He just kept going and going, and then he lifted his own gun to my head and said he'd count to three, and when he got there one of us was going to be on the floor dead. I was crying. I was pleading with him. But he kept counting. When he got to three I … I did it. I shot him. I shot him. I shot him."

  Sobs racked the man. The gun jerked against Kirsten's throat, and it hurt like hell. Phillip shoved the trapdoor open and started up through. She felt a soft breeze, warm sunlight. She blinked in the brightness.

  Phillip kicked the door shut after they passed through, and then he stood on top of it, to prevent Adam from coming up. He was still crying.

  She could hear Adam scrambling up from inside, hear his frantic efforts to shove the door open. Phillip bounced with the force of Adam's blows from beneath the door.

  "I did everything just the way he said I should," Phillip went on. Talking to her, or to himself, or maybe to God. She wasn't sure anymore. "I took the gun he'd been holding … and I wiped all the prints off the one I had shot him with. And then I left it lying there beside him. And I went away. All that was left was to kill you, Kirsten. He said if I did it right, if it looked like an accident or a suicide, I'd get everything. All his money. Everything."

  She looked up at him. At the line of his jaw, the crook in his nose. Her brother. Her mother's son. And Joseph's. The enormity of it rocked her. She'd known about her mother's pregnancy by another man. Heard her mother talk about getting rid of the child. And she'd always been aware of her father's hatred for Joseph Cowan. But she'd never put it all together until now.

  It shook her to the marrow. But her own impending death shook her even more.