One thing she knew-she wouldn’t wait for him here. In the house she’d be trapped; there was no place to hide where he wouldn’t find her. Now that Susie Grace was safe, she thought, it would be better to run. Outdoors, in the maze of corrals and sheds, stables and animals, she’d have a chance. But how to escape? If she picked the wrong door she could run right into the intruder’s arms. And there were only two ways out of the house, not counting the boarded-up hallway-the front door, and right around the corner from there, the kitchen.
Susie Grace had gone out the kitchen door, so it would be unlocked. The intruder would probably come in that way. Which left the front door for her.
She crept out of the bedroom, down the hall and into the living room. When she heard the kitchen door creak softly, she wrenched open the front door, flew across the porch and down the steps, and ran. She ran instinctively, away from the sinister dark sedan, down the lane toward the old barn, bypassing the stables and the restlessly whickering horses. She ran without heed, praying her feet would find their own way in the darkness, praying she wouldn’t trip on a hummock of grass, praying Susie Grace had done what she’d been told and stayed at Boyd’s where she’d be safe. Praying.
Running as hard as she was, with her heart and breath loud in her ears, she didn’t hear the pounding footsteps until they were almost upon her. When she did hear them she gave a high, frantic cry and tried to run faster, but cruel hands caught her just inside the barn’s wide-open door. She struggled wildly, but the hands jerked her back against a hard, panting body. An arm clamped viciously across her throat, cutting off her breath.
A breathless laugh gusted through her hair. “What’re you fighting me for, Yance? I’m your fiancé, remember?” The voice was softly accented…well known to her.
The arm across her throat eased enough for her to gasp it out. “Diego?”
“Yeah, querida, who did you think? You know how long I been looking for you? Nice of you to make the news broadcasts, so I know where to find you, eh?”
“Diego, please-”
“Are you surprised to see me? Ah-well, you see, after the man I sent to kill you missed, I got to thinking…shooting is too easy a way for you to die.” His lips were close to her ear…his hot breath misted her cheek. “I think you should know what you did to me, sending me to prison. I want you to experience what I did…what was done to me, all those years. Then I kill you slowly…with my bare hands…while you look in my eyes-”
“Turn her loose.” The voice rasped through the darkness, a sound like a rusty hinge.
Roan turned the SUV onto the ranch’s gravel road, his fingers beating a restless tattoo on the steering wheel. Now that the moment of truth was here, his heart felt sore and heavy. How could this have happened? He’d have done just about anything-paid a high price in sweat, blood and tears, to set Mary free from the murder charge against her. Now he knew just how high that price was going to be. Dammit, Boyd.
Up ahead he could see the house was dark. Kind of early for everyone to be in bed, he thought, but maybe because Susie Grace wasn’t allowed to watch TV…
Then he saw the dark sedan.
Diego spun toward the sound, jerking Mary around too, pressed against him, his arm tight against her throat again.
“I said, turn her loose.” Boyd was a dark silhouette in the barn doorway, his bow-legged shape like something out of an old Western movie. Like something from a Western movie, too, was the old-fashioned weapon he held in his hand.
When Mary heard the clicking sound of the gun being cocked, she reacted out of instinct, perhaps helped by the self-defense classes she’d taken long ago. She stomped savagely on Diego’s instep, then let her body go limp.
Diego DelRey wasn’t a powerful man. In pain, and finding himself with Mary’s full dead weight in his arms, he gave a bellow of rage and let her slip to the ground.
Roan was out of the SUV before the wheels had stopped turning. A quick check of the sedan told him it was empty. He was heading for the house at a dead run when he heard the shot.
It sounded like thunder, trapped in the confines of that old wooden building. As it died away, Mary could hear panic-stricken wings flapping somewhere up in the rafters. Somewhere behind her, Diego was a motionless dark shape in the straw. She lifted her head and saw Boyd standing in the barn doorway, his arm hanging limp at his side, the gun pointing at the floor. She gave a little whimpering cry and was scrambling over to him on her hands and knees when she saw Roan running toward her.
She tried to rise, but her legs wouldn’t hold her. And then he was there, helping her up, folding her into his arms and holding her tightly. Whispering brokenly into her hair. “Oh God…Mary…Mary. Are you okay? Did he hurt you? Oh…God…Mary.”
Roan held on to her shaking body and knew he didn’t want to let go of her ever again. But when Boyd walked over to him, he knew he was going to have to, for a little while, at least. He peeled himself away from her and turned her into the curve of his arm to keep her close, and Boyd handed him his old Colt 45 revolver, butt-first.
“Want you both to know,” the rancher said in his gruff and crusty voice, “I wouldn’t’a let her go to jail.” He hesitated, then touched the bill of his cap and gave a little nod. “You got things to finish up here. I’ll be waitin’ for you in the car.”
His footsteps crunched away into the night.
Roan caught Mary’s arms. “Susie Grace-”
“It’s okay-she’s okay. She’s at Boyd’s.” Her voice broke and grew thick with tears. “Oh Roan…Boyd?”
“I’m afraid so.” Aching with love and grief, he took her face between his hands and whispered as he kissed away her tears, “It’s all over, Mary. The nightmare’s over. You’re free.”
It was the wee hours of the morning before Mary got to sleep. Long after Roan had left to accompany Boyd and Diego DelRey’s body back to town, after Susie Grace had fallen asleep with a placidly purring Cat tucked under her arm, she sat huddled in the middle of Roan’s bed, hugging her drawn-up knees, with the words Roan had said to her echoing inside her head.
The nightmare’s over. You’re free.
Why, then, did she feel such desolation?
She must have fallen asleep at last, because she woke up when she heard Susie Grace in the kitchen, rattling cereal bowls and scolding Cat for jumping on the counter. She got up, sticky-eyed and fuzzy-headed, long enough to see Susie Grace off on the school bus, then crept back to bed, too dispirited to begin the task of packing. She knew she had to do it-Roan would be coming back, soon, to take her home. Not home. To Queenie’s house, not mine. Boyd had been arrested for the murder of Jason Holbrook, who had killed his daughter…Roan’s wife. The charges against Mary would be dropped. She could have her car back. Her life.
My life. But what is my life now?
Again, she must have slept. She woke with her throat parched and chest aching, having dreamed-Roan had been wrong about the nightmares-of being chased endlessly by something or someone terrifying she couldn’t see. As she lay in groggy half-awareness, it came again-the sound that had awakened her-a wrenching metallic screech.
Scrambling out of bed, she rushed into the hallway. And saw Roan, with a crowbar in his hands, pulling nails out of the boards that held the plywood barricade in place.
“Roan?” she said in a wondering voice. Her stomach dropped and her legs weakened at the sight of him. He threw her a look of such endearing uncertainty, it grew hard for her to breathe.
“Sorry to wake you,” he grunted as he attacked another nail, not sounding sorry at all.
“What are you doing?” She ventured closer, catching her hair with both hands and dragging it back from her forehead.
“Thought maybe it was time I finished this.” He glanced at her, then quickly away to stare narrow-eyed at the last remaining board, just above his head. His voice was a muffled rumble. “Never know-might have need of it someday.”
He lifted the crowbar, wedged it under the board and g
ave it a mighty yank. The board came away with another of those earsplitting screeches. He tossed it aside and stretched his arms wide to grasp the edges of the plywood. His muscles bulged beneath the soft fabric of his shirt as he lifted it, turned it, and propped it against the wall.
Mary gave a little gasp as light poured into the dark hallway. Then she followed Roan as he stepped across the ragged threshold, into a forest of two-by-fours.
“Doesn’t need all that much,” he said, peering up at the underside of the roof. “Sheetrock…a little paint. Bathroom’s all plumbed.” He looked at Mary, a longer look this time, and she saw the vulnerability he tried so hard to hide. “It’ll be a nice big bathroom when it’s done.”
It came to her then, with a force and clarity that rocked her to the depths of her soul, what he hadn’t been able to bring himself to say. She knew. “Roan,” she said softly, “don’t you think you should get back on the horse?”
For another long moment he glared at her, eyes narrowed and fierce, blue and bright as chips of sky. A great breath rushed from his chest. “Ah, hell, Mary, what do you want me to say? That I’d like it if you’d stay here with me? Maybe help me rebuild this place? Shoot, you know I would. But I know this ranch is a long ways away from the life that’s waitin’ for you out there. You’re free to go back to it now. Pick up from where it got taken away from you ten years ago.”
No-he wouldn’t ask it of her. Wouldn’t do that to her. The tears he could see shimmering in those green-gold eyes of hers were hard enough to bear. He was so busy denying himself happiness, denying it so vehemently, it was a moment before he realized what she was saying, in her husky, shaking whisper.
“Roan…don’t you know? There’s nothing of that life I want. Not anymore. That life…was my past. My future?” She hitched one shoulder, and a tear spilled over and ran down her cheek. She brushed it away with a little laughing sob. “I’d like to think that might be here…with you. And Susie Grace.”
“Really?” He felt exhausted, suddenly…wracked with pain and a sort of dazed and wary hope, the way he imagined a marathon runner must feel when he staggers across the finish line…unable to grasp the fact that the long race is finally over, and that he’s won. “I’m just a small-town sheriff, Mary, all I’ve got-”
The tears in her eyes seemed to sizzle, now. “Maybe a small-town sheriff is what I want.”
He frowned down at her, still not ready to believe. “You’d really stay with me? Marry me?” She nodded, vigorously, touching her fingers to her tear-drenched lips. He let out an exasperated breath. “Then I’ve really got to ask you, why?”
“Because I love you,” she burst out, laughing and crying again. Fire and rain. “I really love you. So much I’m willing to marry you in the hopes that someday you’ll come to love me.”
“Come to-” He stared at her, stunned, then reached for her with shaking hands. “My God, Mary,” he whispered as he pulled her to him, “don’t you know? I do already. Love you.”
“I know,” she murmured with a long sigh as she snuggled joyfully against him. “I just wanted to hear you say it.”
On the day Boyd Stuart was arraigned on murder charges for the shooting of Jason Holbrook, and the charges against Mary Owen were formally dismissed, Roan paid a visit to the cemetery. He went there fairly regularly, especially in the spring and summertime, when there were fresh flowers to put on Erin’s grave. On this particular day, though, he found he wasn’t there alone. When he saw the tall figure standing beside his wife’s tombstone, head bowed, hat in his hands, expensively cut Western-style jacket hanging loosely from stooped shoulders, he checked and hitched in a breath before he went on.
“Mornin’, Cliff,” he said as he joined him.
Senator Holbrook looked over at him, nodded, then shifted his hat to one hand. “Roan… Uh, listen, I’ll be getting out of your way. I just…” He waved a hand, cleared his throat and said gruffly, “They set Jason’s marker today. I wanted to stop by before I left town, you know…just to check-make sure everything was right.” He paused…gestured with his hat toward the simple granite block that bore the words, Erin Elizabeth Stuart Harley-Beloved Wife and Mother-Beloved Daughter. “I hope you know how sorry I am.”
The pain in the other man’s voice made Roan look at him, much as he didn’t want to. The man who was most likely his father looked haggard…a hundred years old. Roan tightened his jaw and nodded, knowing the senator wasn’t asking for his sympathy, wouldn’t want it if it was offered.
“Jason was my son,” Holbrook said in a voice like tearing cloth. “But I never would have-” His voice broke, and he finished in a harsh whisper. “You have to believe-I didn’t know.”
“I know,” Roan said, with a tightness in his own throat. He held out his hand. After a brief hesitation the senator took it in both of his, his politician’s handshake.
“Son…” For a long moment the man’s glittering blue eyes gazed back into Roan’s. Then he squeezed his hand once more-hard-and went striding away across the grass.
Roan watched him go, then huffed out a breath and reached to lay the sprays of lilac he’d brought on top of the tombstone. A few minutes later Mary came to join him, holding Susie Grace by the hand-his two red-headed women. Tears misted his eyes as he lifted Susie Grace up so she could add her sprig of lilac to his, then took Mary’s hand and held it while she put hers there, too. Then they all turned and walked back to the car together.
Something stirred through his hair like warm breath…caressed his cheek with loving fingers. The wind? Perhaps…it could have been. But Roan knew better; his Spirit Messenger’s touch was familiar to him now.
This time, he had the strangest feeling she was saying goodbye.
Epilogue
Joy gave the bridal veil one last twitch, then leaned down to lay her cheek alongside Yancy’s-no, Mary-she must remember to call her Mary from now on. “It’s just perfect-you look absolutely beautiful, sweetie pie.”
She straightened up to look out the windows, checking on the girls. She saw her daughter Carrie prancing across the Hartsville United Methodist Church lawn, showing Susie Grace exactly how she was supposed to scatter the rose petals in her basket. Susie Grace looked absolutely perfect, too, in her frothy yellow flower-girl dress and blue cowboy boots, a wreath of daisies in her red hair.
“Okay, now, stand up,” Joy ordered, turning back to the bride. “Let me have a look at you…okay, no wrinkles…oops-you’ve got a smudge of lipstick…” She stood back, hands on her hips. “Darlin’, have you been kissin’ the groom ahead of time? Now, shame on you.”
Mary gave a guilty giggle. “Guess I just couldn’t help it. You should see him-he looks so adorable in his black Western-style suit-kind of like a riverboat gambler.”
Joy reached for her hands and gave them a squeeze. Her throat was tight with emotion. “Oh, honey-you really have found it, haven’t you? That rainbow you were chasing? The fairy tale…happiness.”
A laugh burst from her dearest friend’s lips, along with a sob. Her lovely green-gold eyes sparked fire…streamed rain.
“Yes,” Mary whispered, and her smile was like the sun breaking through. “Oh, yes.”
KATHLEEN CREIGHTON
has roots deep in the California soil but has relocated to South Carolina. As a child, she enjoyed listening to old-timers’ tales, and her fascination with the past only deepened as she grew older. Today she says she is interested in everything-art, music, gardening, zoology, anthropology and history, but people are at the top of her list. She also has a lifelong passion for writing, and now combines her two loves in romance novels. Her book The Top Gun’s Return won the 2004 RITA® Award for Best Long Contemporary Novel.
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The Sheriff of Heartbreak County Page 25