Billing himself as Markham Wilder, the young man perfected his prophetic show, swindling small homegrown churches with his visions of abundance. The file held account after account, yet he was never blamed, never suspected. Suspicion always fell on someone in the church—probably someone he set up.
Would that have been Erin? Had he started casting doubt, stirring unrest? Maybe sensing that led her to investigate him. Markham wouldn’t have expected resistance from the minister’s daughter, not when the older daughter was so pliable. Morgan formed a cold smile, thinking the man had no idea what pixie he was provoking.
He read on. As the proceeds accrued, Markham learned how to shelter the money offshore and rolled a portion of that into each new scam, the ripest plum being Erin’s father’s church, for which—thanks to her—he got charged, prosecuted, and incarcerated. Four years for his grudge to grow.
The knot in his stomach hardened. Markham killed his cousins, but assuming he’d kill Erin would paralyze him. Predisposed by loss to expect the worst, Morgan fought it with everything in him. This time he would not be impotent. This time the reckoning was his.
Within the hour, he joined Rudy in the trees and stared at the house he’d bought with such different intentions. “Any activity?”
Rudy lowered the binoculars. “Not outside. I’ve seen him walking around the kitchen. He’s been walking all night, talking to himself.”
“No one else?”
“Seems to be alone, but he goes through that door and comes back.”
“That’s the old asylum cellar.” Where Erin had gotten so spooked she never wanted to be in that house again.
Rudy blew a long breath through his lips. “Quinn’s in there?”
He swallowed. “Rudy, do you mind calling her Erin? It’s her married name.”
“No. Sure. Sorry.”
“I’m just trying to—” What?
“I get it.”
Morgan stared back at the house. His nerves were so fired up, his skin felt prickly. He needed this to happen now. He activated his radio and told the head of William’s security team he was moving.
Duane Bow replied in the affirmative. “Go.”
With the cellar a potential propane bomb, they couldn’t risk shots fired. Given the near certainty that Markham wanted to live, avoiding gunfire should be utmost in his own mind. He took out his phone and called Markham. “I’m here with the money.”
“Where?” Markham left the kitchen. “I don’t see you.”
“I’m going to drive up with it now.” He was already heading to where he’d left the sedan that had been waiting at the airport. He pulled up outside Vera’s garage and removed two sports bags weighing twenty-two pounds each and holding two million dollars between them. Through his bank William had facilitated the transaction more swiftly and smoothly than had seemed possible.
Praying that grace would continue, Morgan walked to the open space outside the front window, not too close to the house but where he could be easily seen. He set the bags down on either side. This was half of his part of the bargain. If Markham shot him dead, he wouldn’t get the jet or the third million. Might be an option for a madman, but he was counting on greed.
When he saw Markham in the window he said into the phone, “Here’s the money. Bring me Quinn.”
Markham had intended to accept the deal, but looking at Morgan standing there, smug and confident, and everything Mark Withers once wanted to be, he felt a swelling rage. Break him, kill him, kill them all.
He turned and stalked to the cellar, yanked the door open, and descended. He hardly looked at the women. He wouldn’t think of them as anything but collateral damage.
“You didn’t consider the collateral damage.” The blows rained down. “You cost us, you pathetic ingrate.”
He cost them, and he paid them in full. Nineteen years of collateral damage. Carrying the battery-operated lantern, he moved from position to position, opening the propane valves. Something opened inside him, releasing poisons equally flammable. Burn it, burn it.
“Markham?” Hannah’s doubting voice fueled his fury.
Quinn stared through him as though he didn’t exist, as if he were nothing. She’d see. Once and for all, she’d see.
With all the tanks releasing a slow stream, he shot one look at them and stalked back up the stairs, leaving the door open for a draft. In the garage, he filled a quart jar from the gasoline can and shoved a rag into the mouth. Even without the drug, his mind was working more sharply and clearly than ever before. This was his prophetic call, his vision from God—to rain fire upon the unbelieving harlots, the grasping tycoon. Burn, burn, burn.
Holding the jar and lighter behind his back, he drew Quinn’s gun and stepped around the side of the house. “I want to see the money.”
Morgan turned, surprised. “Okay.” He bent and unzipped the bags.
It looked real and impossible to believe. “Step away.” He circled behind as Morgan moved toward the house.
“Two million there,” Morgan said, as though it were nothing. “The third on the jet. I only want Quinn.”
“Then go and get her.”
Morgan looked behind him, then back. “We’ll go together.”
Markham raised the gun.
Morgan spread his hands. “The pilot won’t take off without my order. Don’t screw up your chance.”
Markham laughed darkly. Amazing what a pilot would do with a gun to his head. He could see it so clearly. An airport near Juniper Falls. A private jet. A reluctant pilot seeing the light.
With that very gun held up, he said, “If you want your wife, you better get her before I change my mind.” He could see the man’s fear, reveled in it. “I left the cellar open for you.”
Burn, burn. It didn’t matter how much money Morgan Spencer made, how many books he wrote, how famous he was. Markham’s chest swelled. All he had to do was sacrifice both queens and the power was his—prophet, hand of God. God.
As Morgan disappeared inside, Markham shoved the gun into his jeans. He flicked the lighter and ignited the rag. Behold the instrument. He rushed toward the house and felt a punch that spun him half around before he heard the shot. The last things he saw were the oaf from the general store with a hunting rifle and the ground bursting into flame when he fell.
Hearing the report of gunfire, Erin jammed the rod once more into the hasp of Hannah’s shackle, yelling with the effort that ripped her palms open. “Pull, Hannah!”
“It hurts.”
“Pull!” she screamed.
With both their strength and what felt like another pair of powerful hands, they broke the weld on the hasp as a man charged down the stairs. With her lips drawn back on bared teeth, she shouldered the rod to swing, then saw him in the flashlight’s beam. “Morgan!”
“Come. Now!”
Choking in the propane that felt like lead in her lungs, she gripped Hannah’s arm and yanked her toward the stairs. They tripped and staggered over each other in clumsy haste as she pushed her sister ahead and Morgan followed. In the kitchen, he propelled them out the back door, pushing them as they ran.
The air seemed to gather and suck in. Then a force threw her off her feet and onto the ground, rolling and skidding. A blast of heat roared up behind her as she shielded her face and eyes. She didn’t have to look to grasp the destruction. Through hollow ears, she heard Hannah crying, heard Morgan hollering, “Erin.”
She tipped her face to see him. “I’m okay.”
He hauled her up from the ground, searching her, feeling her, clutching her.
“It’s all right.” She held him, stroked him, gripped his face, and kissed him. “We’re all right.” They held on, his chest against hers, their hearts beating fast and strong.
Behind them, the fire crackled and spat, shooting flames into the sky as emergency vehicles arrived. They had to have been en route to be there so quickly. But if she’d waited for rescue . . .
She closed her eyes, her chest heaving, and
thanked God for the strength he’d given. Then she dropped to her knees by Hannah and held her stunned and sobbing sister.
Flakes of ash fell like soiled confetti. The smoke and stink of burnt materials and chemical agents stung his nostrils as Morgan ushered Erin and Hannah around the burning house. The flames, the fire equipment, and most horribly the billowing smoke bombarded him.
He braced for panic, but with Erin under his arm, he felt only bone-deep gratitude. They’d alerted local fire and police as soon as the plan was in action, but he hadn’t wanted anyone causing this exact thing, if there was a chance he could lure Markham away peaceably. Right up to the moment he entered the house, he’d hoped. The second he hit the door, he knew better.
Reaching the front of what used to be the house, Hannah broke his hold and flung herself at the charred remains on the ground, screaming and thrashing as firefighters pulled her off. In a weird dissociation, Morgan looked from the body to the big man who resembled Evander Holyfield, holding the two sports bags.
“I couldn’t get the body,” Duane said. “I only had two hands.”
The sheriff arrived with two deputies, but before explanations could begin, the FBI’s Critical Incident Team moved in and took charge. Morgan surveyed the scene as from a distance, hearing Duane and Rudy’s statements. He hadn’t realized Rudy took the shots. Justified, certainly, but it couldn’t hurt that before he left New York, the FBI had issued a warrant for Markham Wilder’s arrest.
In that moment, Rudy became a legend at the Roaring Boar and elsewhere, but by the look of his friend when they wrapped his rifle as evidence, that was far from his mind.
“You okay?”
Rudy gave a slow nod. “It’s not the same though. Can’t field dress it. I mean, the guy was nuts, but . . .”
“Think soldier, not hunter. This was war.”
Duane Bow approached. “I’m cleared by the FBI to return Mr. St. Claire’s funds. Will you be needing the jet?”
Morgan told them to go ahead, then looked at Erin giving her statement to the agent in charge. He saw her glance worriedly at her sister, who must have been sedated to control the hysteria. Seeing her sister for the first time, he could not miss the similarities, yet they were only skin deep. Hannah looked like a leaf that had blown off a bonfire, brittle and singed.
Erin—also battered, with her hands bandaged where she’d torn the skin getting free of the shackles—had a substance and clarity he could hardly take in. Pure and piercing, like rarified air, and yet so exceedingly breathable.
“Have you been checked over?” Sheriff Ingram asked. “Medically?”
“I’m fine. We got out.”
“You know, as an alternative, there’s always law enforcement for these kinds of things.”
Morgan nodded. “Sometimes you just act.”
“I’m not saying it would have ended differently, but you put yourself in harm’s way.”
He nodded at his wife. “They were already in harm’s way. If he’d taken the offer, they would have been safe and . . .”
“Then the agents on the jet would have nabbed him.”
“That was the plan.” Morgan ran a hand through his hair. “Didn’t foresee the Molotov cocktail.” He shook his head. “It seemed everything he did was motivated by greed.”
“I don’t know,” the sheriff said. “With con men there’s power and manipulation in it too.”
And maybe something more sinister. Morgan directed his gaze to the flames the firefighters were knocking down with hoses. That was one house that would not be rebuilt.
Erin joined him with a look over her shoulder at the same awful scene. “Makes me wish I hadn’t done all the patching and painting.”
He formed a soft smile. “That felt like an act of kindness for Livie and me.”
“It was.” But then she shuddered.
“That goodness, the way you cared about RaeAnne and the people treated there—and me— protected you the whole time you were working in it. Whatever evil was there couldn’t get a hold.”
She looked into his face. “I’m not crazy, then?”
“When I was running down the stairs, it felt like hands were pushing against my chest, trying to keep me from you.”
“The hands on my side were greater by far.” She frowned. “But Markham . . .” Her face twisted. “Morgan, he killed Pops. After I called. He killed him and took his phone.” She shook as tears came. “I thought it was Pops calling.”
Dismayed, he gripped her shoulders. “He’s a liar.”
“I saw the bloody phone. And he knew exactly what Pops said to me. He snuck up because Pops and I—”
“You had nothing to do with that.”
“If I hadn’t called—”
“No. It was Markham. Not you.” But it shook him, too, to think their decision to reach out to her family might have ended the old man’s life. They couldn’t have known. But it hurt. He held his wife as the sorrow moved through her. So much destruction, for what?
Holding tight, he looked over her head at Hannah, the piteous piece of the puzzle. “Will your sister be okay?”
“I don’t know.” Erin looked up, pulling herself together as she must have done so many times already. “Could we take her home?”
“With us?”
“No, I mean, to my family.” She wiped her tears and swallowed.
Anger clenched his hands. “Are you ready for that?”
She looked back at her sister, wrapped in a blanket and staring. “She needs her dad.”
“But I was asking about you.”
She shrugged a shoulder. “Markham’s gone. If not now . . . when?”
He made his hands relax. They didn’t deserve her, but he said, “As soon as we’re free to go.” They’d be untangling it for some time. He rubbed her arm. “Could we restrict any future rescues to small children and animals?”
She gasped. “Bella! Livie!”
“Relax. Your only problem there will be convincing Livie that Bella isn’t her doggy. She’s talked of nothing else, and I mean nothing.”
Erin pressed a hand to her chest. “I miss her so much my heart hurts.”
There was nothing else to say to that.
The drive to Hot Springs, South Dakota, with Hannah crying would have been awful. The same drive, silent, broke her heart. With Morgan behind the wheel because of her bandaged hands, Erin glanced back at her sister lying in the back seat of her truck, mute, staring. She wished so many things could be different. But where would she even begin?
When she turned back to study Morgan in profile, a quality of feeling rose inside that was more than emotion. It was as though he were inside her and she in him. The beauty of that made her hurt all the more for Hannah. The cruelty of what Markham had intended would hurt far longer than any physical injuries. Probably forever.
How had her father let that happen? Had his pride and the inability to admit he was wrong jeopardized the person he loved most of all? She understood what Morgan said about building a world for Hannah, but why invite the serpent to the garden?
Or was he merely a fallible man, trying like the rest of them? She sought the right spirit and mindset to face him. Lord.
They had washed up at the ranch before heading out. She’d helped Hannah into and out of the shower and borrowed clothes for both of them from Noelle’s closet. They had not tried to eat, even though the last she and Hannah had was Markham’s bread and water and a Gatorade from the EMTs.
In darkness, they entered the community she’d left four years ago in righteous anger. That anger stirred again as she passed the homes of people she’d known her whole life—church members who lived in close proximity to the minister like a flock around their shepherd. It seemed they would get their money back, once the FBI sorted it out.
She shuddered, doubting these people would ever be told the full extent of what he’d actually done. One tiny bright spot was that she wasn’t going to be charged or have to testify again at Markham’s trial. She w
as free to live her life. Or almost free. Her stomach shrank in when Morgan parked outside her father’s house.
Pops had described her parents’ insipid reaction to her news—in their last conversation before he died. His cell phone must have blown up in Vera’s house, or burnt up on Markham, destroying evidence of that crime. She trembled with grief.
Morgan looked over. “Ready?”
She glanced back at Hannah, still lying there. “I’ll let my father get her.”
She and Morgan went to the door. Since her cell phone was also destroyed, they hadn’t called ahead. She could have used Morgan’s, she supposed, but what would she have said?
It took a long time for anyone to answer the doorbell. Then her father, still mostly brown-haired with white along his hairline, stood in pajamas and a green velour robe, taking them in with bewildered annoyance. “Do you know what time it is?”
She wondered how long those first words to her in four years would linger. “Hannah’s in the car, Dad. She needs you.”
His visible transformation hurt.
“Dad?” She caught his arm before he passed by. “Markham’s dead.”
Stunned, he looked immediately at Hannah, his heart in his eyes. As it should be. She let go of his sleeve.
“Quinn?” Her mother’s voice brought her around.
“Mom.” She went into her arms, needing that touch more than she’d let herself know, then turned. “This is my husband, Morgan.”
“Oh,” Gwen murmured. Knowing nothing of his fame or worldly success—though he did cut a striking figure in the smallness of her parents’ front porch—her mother’s eyes widened nonetheless as she took him in. Erin shook her head. As much as she loved and respected him, she hoped she never looked at him that way.
“Morgan, my mother, Gwen Reilly.”
“Come in,” Gwen told them. Had she always been so whispery? She was a puff of wind next to the mighty redwood Celia, though it wasn’t fair to compare.
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