by B. J Daniels
“I did the best I could by you, Sarah. I let Joe and the rest of the world believe you were dead, but once he found out about my deception...” Doc looked away, and she knew she was gazing at a broken man. She didn’t want to think what Joe had done to him then or would do to him now if he failed.
“So this is about Joe getting revenge against the world, all because I stopped loving him,” Sarah said.
“Not entirely. You don’t remember how it was in the beginning. It makes me sad,” Doc said. “The Prophecy was this small but bright shining light into the future. I had such hopes for the group. And you—” He smiled at her, as if she were the daughter he’d never had. “You had so much fire in you when you were young. You were determined to change the world. You weren’t like Joe. You didn’t want to kill a bunch of people for the publicity. You really wanted to make changes. But, Sarah? I think that woman is still in you. I think you still are Red.”
Her headache was blinding. She couldn’t bear what was going to happen. But nor could she stop it. “You’re wrong, Doc. I’m not that woman. I’ll never be that woman again, no matter what you do to me.”
“I guess we’ll see, because I’m going to give you back those memories of who you were. Once you remember it all... Well, who knows?”
She braced herself. Isn’t this what she’d wanted for so long? All of the memories back? To be whole again? She told herself she wasn’t afraid of remembering Red, the woman they told her had been the true leader of The Prophecy. She was terrified.
“Even if you can turn me into Red again, what would be the point? Joe has already orchestrated Armageddon.”
He smiled sadly and shrugged as he pulled out the velvet bag, opened it and dropped the pendulum into his palm.
Sarah held her breath. The moment of truth. She knew what Doc was capable of doing. If anyone could turn her into Red again, it was Dr. Ralph Venable.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SARAH BLINKED. SHE WAS so tired, all she wanted to do was sleep. She forced her eyes to open. The pale yellow room came into view. For a moment, she wondered where she was as her gaze began to take in the paintings on the wall and she remembered. A guest bedroom in a house somewhere.
She shifted her head, then came wide awake as she heard a moan and looked down.
Dr. Venable lay on the floor in a pool of blood.
Sitting up, Sarah swung her legs over the side of the daybed. The movement left her too dizzy to stand for a moment. She waited for it to pass before she moved to the elderly man on the floor.
“Doc,” she said, kneeling next to him.
His eyelids fluttered for a moment before he looked up at her. “Red.” His voice came out a hoarse whisper. “He would have ruined everything. I couldn’t let him hurt you. He would have never believed you were Red again.” His fingers let go of the gun she now saw he’d been holding to grasp her hand. “You—” His voice broke.
“Don’t try to talk. I’ll find a phone and call for help.” She started to rise, but he gripped her hand more tightly.
“No. Time,” he said brokenly. “Take. The. Gun.”
Her heart was already threatening to beat out of her chest when she realized what he was saying. In her dazed state at waking up and being shocked to see Doc wounded on the floor, she’d forgotten about Joe.
“Take. The. Gun,” he repeated.
She swept up the semiautomatic pistol, checked the clip, flipped off the safety and turned toward the door, surprised to find it standing open.
Rising, she moved slowly toward the door. As she did, she noticed that the laptop computer that had been on the table was gone. She still felt light-headed and had to stop short of the doorway to rest for a moment.
Doc made a sound like a death rattle. She looked back to where he lay. His eyes were open, but the blank darkness she saw there told her he’d passed on to hopefully a better place. She felt a stab of pain heart deep, steadied herself and moved with renewed purpose toward the open doorway.
* * *
FRANK WALKED AROUND the small, empty one-story brick building, smiling to himself. It was just the right size. Not too big, not too small. He stepped it off. This area would be Lynette’s office. Turning, he walked across the wide room to where he would have his. They would have a small kitchen in the back with a coffeepot. There was already a restroom and plenty of space for storage.
He pulled out his cell phone. “I have something I want to show you,” he said when his wife answered the phone. He gave her the address.
She’d sounded surprised, either because he was moving so fast or that he was really going to do this. They were really going to do this. “I’ll be right there.”
He put his phone away and inspected every square inch of the building, inside and out. There were large windows in front of the old dwelling set into the brick walls. That’s where the sign would go, he thought, glancing at a spot next to the front door. They wouldn’t need a large sign. Anyone who needed their services would be able to find them.
Frank felt the thrill of it move through him. He realized he’d never wanted anything so badly in his life—except for Lynette. That he might never get this building or the rest of the life he had planned made him ache. It would all come down to election night.
He told himself he’d done everything possible to protect the future president and his family, short of locking them all up in the jail for the night. Now he just had to have faith that it would all work out. And yet, he couldn’t vanquish that sick feeling at the pit of his stomach that he was wasting his time looking at this building.
“What’s this?” Lynette said as she got out of her car in front of the building. She was smiling, clearly knowing exactly what this was.
“I need your advice,” he said and pushed open the front door.
She stepped in and stopped, no doubt taking in the wood floor, the brick walls, the loft feeling of the remodeled old building. “Can we afford this?” she whispered as if, like him, she’d already fallen in love with it.
“We can,” he said, smiling. “I took a chance and already gave them money down on it. Now it’s just a matter of deciding where you’d like your office and how you’re going to decorate the place.”
She turned to him, tears in her eyes, and then she was in his arms, and he was holding her in the building that, God willing, would be the new Curry Investigations.
* * *
SARAH GRIPPED THE GUN, her finger a hairbreadth from the trigger. Some people didn’t know if they could kill. She didn’t suffer from that question as she peered around the corner of the doorway.
Joe was a few yards down the hallway. From the blood trail he’d left, it appeared that he had tried to crawl away. Now he lay perfectly still.
She moved cautiously toward him, keeping the barrel of the weapon pointed at his back. When she’d returned to Montana after all those years, Buck had insisted she learn to shoot a gun. She’d proven to be an expert marksman, but she knew that was because she’d fired a variety of weapons before she’d met him. That memory had been one that Dr. Venable had taken from her—until now.
Approaching slowly, she nudged his expensive leather shoe, seemingly too expensive for a man Martin believed had been a priest. Or had all that been merely a disguise? Joe didn’t react. She kicked harder. Still nothing.
The way he was sprawled, she would have to step past him. That would be the most dangerous part, she thought. Then she saw the laptop tucked under his arm. No, the most dangerous would be when she tried to pull the laptop from under his body—if there was any life left in him.
The house was deathly quiet as she moved closer. She couldn’t tell whether or not Joe was breathing. Nor was she going to check for a pulse. She moved closer, shifting the gun into her right hand and stepping alongside him. Pressing the end of the barrel to his te
mple, she reached for the laptop.
* * *
SAWYER TRIED TO stand on his bad leg. A stab of blinding pain shot up his calf into his thigh. With a curse, he fell back into the chair where he’d been sitting.
“You keep walking on it instead of using the crutches, and it is never going to heal,” his doctor had told him impatiently. “Stop being a tough guy. Put the leg up, stay off of it, or you’re going to end up back in the hospital.”
The problem was that he needed to be a tough guy. He needed to be able to walk. Instead, he had no choice but to use the crutches tomorrow night at the Beartooth Fairgrounds. How was he going to watch out for Ainsley when he couldn’t move faster than a tortoise?
His cell phone rang. He made a silent wish that it was Ainsley. It was Pete Corran, Kitzie’s partner. He almost didn’t take it. “Yes?”
“It’s me,” Kitzie said. “Pete loaned me his phone. Don’t hang up. I thought you’d like to know that I just got fairground duty for tomorrow night. I know you’re out of commission. I figured you would be worried about Ainsley. I wanted you to know that I’ll be there.”
“And this is supposed to relieve my mind, given what you’ve done in the past?”
“That’s all behind us.”
“Really? How do I know you won’t try to get her drunk?”
“Come on, Sawyer. You have to admit it was fun seeing that side of Ainsley. By the way, I’m sorry.”
He growled in answer and disconnected, telling himself he was glad Kitzie would be watching out for Ainsley. But there was no way he wasn’t going to be there, as well.
* * *
JOE WAS HEAVIER than he looked. Sarah was forced to lay the gun down and use both hands to pull the laptop out from under him. It was smeared with blood but didn’t look to have been damaged. She wouldn’t know until she opened it.
She tucked the laptop under her arm and picked up the gun again. Joe still hadn’t moved. She quickly stepped away from him and stopped to listen. No sound came from the house. She still had no idea where she was, but as she headed toward what she assumed was the front of the home, she spotted her SUV parked outside. Past the vehicle were the Crazy Mountains. The landmark told her the general area. She would be able to figure out how to get out of here.
As she pushed open the front door and headed down the steps, her one hope was that Joe had left the keys in the SUV. Otherwise, she would have to go back inside the house and search his body for them. With a sense of urgency already driving her, she didn’t want to waste any more time with Joe Landon.
Reaching the SUV, she opened the door, laid the laptop on the passenger seat and felt for the ignition. The keys jangled as her fingers brushed them.
For the first time since she’d opened her eyes, she let herself breathe as she slid behind the wheel. The SUV engine roared to life. Glancing at the house, she half expected to see Joe framed in the doorway with an assault rifle in his hands.
She threw the SUV into Reverse, the image of her windshield exploding on the bullet’s impact too vivid in her mind.
Sarah tore off down the road, headed in the direction of Big Timber. All the months of worrying about Red and that part of her memory that had been missing was now gone. She knew exactly who she was and what she was going to do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“MRS. HAMILTON IS here to see you, Sheriff,” the dispatcher said. Something in her voice warned him. “She says it’s urgent. You might want to—”
“Send her back.” Frank heard a door open, then the sound of staggering footfalls. He frowned and was getting to his feet to investigate as Sarah Johnson Hamilton appeared in his office doorway.
“Sarah?” Her hair and clothes were in disarray and unless he was mistaken, there was blood on the hem of her dress. There was a bruise on her cheek and blood on her swollen lower lip. But it was the look in her eyes that shocked him the most as she stepped in and closed the door.
Without a word, she moved to his desk and put down what she’d been carrying under her arm. He stared at the blood-smeared laptop computer, then at her. “What is this?”
“It’s all there—the series of coordinated deadly attacks The Prophecy has planned for tomorrow night. It will be the most devastating attack in history if you don’t stop it.”
“How did you—”
“It doesn’t matter how I got it. You can stop him.”
“Stop whom?”
“Prophecy leader Joe Landon and his plan to kill hundreds—if not thousands—of people across the world on election night.” She brushed her hands together as if she had washed them of it. Her palms were dark with dried blood. “It’s all in there, where they plan to hit, how many people are involved, everything. If you move fast, you can stop it.”
“Sarah, if what you say is on this computer, I have to know where you got it and how you’re involved.”
Tears welled in her blue eyes. “It’s up to you now.” She turned as if to walk away.
“I can’t let you leave.”
Stopping at the door, she turned back to him. “You don’t want to arrest me. The wife of the next president of the United States? But more importantly, you don’t want to alert The Prophecy by holding me here. If you don’t act at once on what is in there, you will regret it the rest of your life. Joe’s password is Armageddon. I saw him mouth the letters when he typed it in.”
She took a step and staggered. Her hand went to her temple.
“You’re hurt,” he said, moving to her quickly.
“No. I’m fine. I’ve never been better.” Her gaze came up to his. “Sheriff, you have more important things to do than worry about me. Joe’s dead. So is Dr. Venable. After you take care of what’s on that computer, I’ll tell you where you can find them both.”
“I’m going to get one of my deputies to drive you to the hospital.”
“No, I drove myself here. I can get home just fine. Don’t let me down, Frank. Don’t let the country down.” With that she pulled away from him, opened the door and staggered down the hallway and out into the fall day.
Frank turned back to the laptop on his desk, a chill moving through him.
* * *
BUCK HAD BEEN busy all day. With Sarah in Helena, he hadn’t wanted to come home to an empty house. He was furious at her for giving her Secret Service detail the slip. Worse, those men would be reprimanded. He still hadn’t been able to reach his wife by phone. He tried not to worry, but after months of being suspicious of Sarah, he couldn’t help it. That feeling of doom was heavy in his chest. He felt as if he was now just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
He was surprised to come home to find Sarah’s car out front and Ainsley waiting for him. “Where’s your mother?” he asked after giving his daughter a hug.
“I don’t know. Her car is here, but I haven’t seen her. I’ve been here all day.” Ainsley frowned. “She must have parked and then come in the back door. Why would she do that?”
“You must have been in the kitchen when she came in,” he said, annoyed that she would be suspicious of Sarah—just like the rest of his daughters. “She’s probably upstairs and didn’t even realize you were here. I’ll run up and say hello to your mother. Do you need anything?” he asked.
Ainsley shook her head. “No, actually I’m meeting Olivia and the twins. We’re all excited about tomorrow night.”
“Me, too,” he said, pleased that his entire family would be there. “I just hope I win.”
“Are we going to have to call you Mr. President?” she joked.
He laughed as he started up the stairs, anxious to see Sarah. He hadn’t been able to reach her on all his attempts to call her. He wasn’t about to tell Ainsley, but unfortunately there were times that he, too, had suspicions about their mother.
At their bedroom doo
r, he heard the sound of the shower running. He stepped in, closing the door softly behind him. As he neared the bathroom, he was surprised to hear what sounded like...singing. Sarah was singing? He hadn’t heard her do that for so many years that it made him stop for a moment in surprise.
“Sarah?” he called as he tried the bathroom door. The knob turned in his hand. He stuck his head into the steam-filled room. “Sarah?”
The singing stopped. “You made it home,” she said, peeking around the end of the large walk-in shower. “Wanna join me?”
For a moment, she looked so much like the young woman he’d married the first time that he only stared at her. He felt something cold settle in his belly for a second. There was definitely something different about her, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.
“I changed my hair,” she said. “You really can’t tell since it’s still wet. Sure you don’t want a closer look?”
Buck shook off whatever had made him hesitate and smiled as he began to take off his clothes. This was his Sarah. She was back.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING it was all over the news. Homeland Security was taking credit for the huge bust involving a dozen terrorists, thousands of pounds of explosives and what would have been an orchestrated attack from inside the US—as well as around the world—by an anarchist group from the late 1970s.
Sarah watched it on the television only long enough to make sure that the sheriff had managed to make all the necessary arrests. When Buck left to go downstairs to breakfast, she told him she would be there in a few minutes.
She placed the call to the sheriff and told him where she thought the house was that she’d been held in. She’d been too worked up yesterday as she was driving toward town to pay a whole lot of attention to the turns she’d made.
“I’m sure you’ll be able to find it,” she told Frank.