Boots and Bullets

by B. J Daniels

  Kate and her friends had done a wonderful job. He’d been amazed how many people had been waiting outside the door and since he’d taken his position, the line had not stopped for a minute.

  Kate must be so proud.

  Just the thought of her tore at his heart. Maybe it would have been easier on both of them if he’d left this morning. After her successful haunted house, she would have her friends and all the volunteers to celebrate with.

  He’d originally planned to leave in the morning, but he realized now that leaving tonight would be better. Kate knew he hated goodbyes. She’d understand.

  The roar of the basement increased. He tried to see Kate in the darkness of the devil’s cape by the back door. There was only the faint exit light glowing on the wall nearby, but every once in a while the cape moved.

  He tried to relax. McCall had called earlier to tell him that they’d gotten a fingerprint off the batteries from the doll he and Kate had found in the shop crib. The print had matched Roberta’s.

  Cyrus still believed that someone had come up with the money to pay Candace Porter, aka Katherine Landon, to switch the babies. He was sure it had been either his grandmother or Joanna McCormick or both.

  Those suspicions were confirmed when McCall called to tell him that she had found in Roberta’s files that she’d made a deposit to her account on Dec. 17, 1980 for ten thousand dollars. She’d made a withdrawal for five thousand Dec. 19, 1980.

  Roberta Warren must have been the go-between. Her neck must have been on the line to make sure the nurse did as she was told.

  They wouldn’t know if the babies had actually been switched until McCall located Jace Dennison. McCall had told him that she was having trouble getting Virginia’s baby’s body exhumed. Not only Pepper and Joanna were fighting it, but Virginia, as well.

  Was it possible Virginia had been the one to pay to have the babies switched?

  He tried to put it out of his mind. McCall was still investigating. But he had to let it go. All he cared about was that now Kate should be safe.

  The devil costume hadn’t moved for some time, he realized with a start. Nor had he heard anyone shriek as they exited the building for he wasn’t sure how long.

  He swung down from his perch and raced along the back of the horror exhibits to the exit, telling himself she was fine. The killer was dead. He had no reason to worry about her.

  As he swung around the corner, he saw at once that the huge cape hung empty. Even then, he told himself she must have just stepped out of it for a moment.

  Then he saw the note pinned to the fabric.

  He snatched it off and stepped out of the way of the costumed revelers. He read the scrawled letters.

  I have Kate. If you ever want to see her alive again come to the old hospital alone. We will be waiting.

  “Cyrus?”

  He jumped at the sound of Jasmine’s voice. Hastily, he stuffed the note into his pocket as he turned to face her.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked.

  He knew he must have looked like hell. “I need you to do something for me,” he said, surprised how calm he sounded. “Can you make sure everyone gets out of here and lock up? I’ve sent Kate to a motel. She wasn’t feeling well. I’m going to go check on her now.”

  If Kate’s friend suspected anything, she didn’t let on. A part of him wanted to tell her, wanted to tell her to call the sheriff. He knew he might need backup in case things went to hell tonight, but he couldn’t take the chance that if he didn’t go alone, it would get Kate killed.

  He left by the side door and ran the five blocks to the old hospital. It was pitch-black beside the building. He stood for a moment getting his bearings.

  The inside of the building was dark, the windowpanes like blank eyes staring out. He couldn’t see if someone was watching him. Or waiting just beyond the glass.

  The front door was still chained and padlocked. Cyrus walked around the building to a side door. Also locked. At the back door, he slowed as he saw someone had left it ajar for him.

  Away from a window, he reached into his shoulder holster and drew out his weapon. A sliver of fear embedded itself beneath his skin. He had no idea what he was going to find once he stepped inside.

  All he could think about was getting to Kate. If whoever took her hurt her…

  Cyrus moved to the door, listening, but heard no sound coming from inside the building.

  Carefully, he eased the door open, staying to one side, then slipped into the darkness. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust before he could see a faint light coming from down the hall.

  He started toward it, his boot heels echoing softly as he approached.

  When he reached the corner, he saw where the light was coming from, but then again, he’d already known, hadn’t he?

  The light was coming from the open door of the nursery.

  Chapter Fifteen

  McCall had expected her cousin to go back to Denver once he’d heard about Roberta Warren’s confession.

  Even though he hadn’t said anything, she’d bet he was as suspicious as she was. McCall didn’t like it when everything got tied up too neatly. It made her cautious. That was one reason she was determined to get all the evidence together as quickly as possible.

  That meant verifying everything in Roberta’s confession. McCall had already contacted the president of the bank. She was meeting him there after discovering a safe-deposit box key among Roberta’s possessions.

  At her knock, he opened the door and led her into the safe-deposit room. Using her key and he using the bank’s, she opened the box and carried it to a table.

  McCall dumped the contents of the safe-deposit box on the table and began to go through it. She hadn’t found anything at Roberta’s death scene to indicate it had been anything but a suicide. Of course, McCall had been suspicious nonetheless. If Roberta really had been responsible for everything, then this case was over, all the missing details lost forever.

  But what bothered McCall was Roberta’s motive. Money? What other motive could she have had?

  In her suicide note, Roberta said she’d found out that Candace was really Katherine Landon and had lied about being a registered nurse. So Roberta said she’d blackmailed her into switching the babies because Virginia Winchester had no business raising a baby and Marie Dennison deserved a child. Roberta said she’d known that Marie’s baby had a weak heart.

  There’d been no mention of the five grand she’d paid Candace/Katherine in the suicide note. That seemed odd to McCall.

  The contents of the safe-deposit box included a stack of stocks and bonds, a large amount of cash, Roberta’s husband’s birth and death certificates and her own birth certificate and an envelope marked In case of death.

  Carefully McCall opened the envelope and began to read, her heart pounding as she read Roberta Warren’s real confession. The woman had definitely known too much.

  “I’m going to need backup, two units, stat,” the sheriff said, getting on the phone.

  KATE STARED AT THE GUN, then at the masked man pointing it at her.

  He’d appeared before the rest of the crowd had reached her, wearing a hideous monster mask. The moment Kate had seen him with the gun, she’d screamed, but the sound had been lost in the ruckus of the haunted-house revelers.

  He’d grabbed her arm and shoved the barrel of the gun into her ribs. “Give me any trouble and I will kill you right here.”

  She’d believed him as he’d handed her a mask that covered not only her face but her hair.

  “Put that on,” he’d ordered, then he’d forced her at gunpoint out the side door to where he’d parked his pickup right outside her shop in the alley. Then he drove her to the old hospital.

  Now she sat on the floor, her back against the wall, watching him pace. He kept looking at his watch, giving her the impression he was expecting someone. There was something about him that almost seemed familiar, but with that horrible mask covering everything but his eye
s and a little slit of mouth, she couldn’t place him.

  “Who are we waiting for?” she asked, but like the other questions she’d asked him, he hadn’t bothered to answer.

  So, she sat and listened, waiting, her heart in her throat, afraid she knew exactly who they were waiting for.

  AS CYRUS WALKED down the hallway toward the nursery, he thought of the dream that had started all of this. It had brought him to Whitehorse, to Kate. He knew Kate had been in danger since the moment she’d set foot in this town, but it didn’t make it any easier. His dream and him showing up had only put her in more jeopardy.

  For days he’d been telling himself he had to get back to Denver, back to the life he and Cordell had made for themselves.

  It had been fear. He’d seen his twin go through a horrible marriage and an even worse divorce. His own father had been forced to raise his sons alone because he’d married the wrong woman.

  Cyrus hadn’t realized just how afraid he was of falling in love until Kate. Love. He loved her. He tried to think of the exact moment it had happened and instead saw a series of moments culminating in him falling head over heels for her.

  What was he so afraid of? Marriage to Kate?

  Or the fear that somehow marriage would ruin what they had?

  But now that he might lose Kate…

  He paused to listen. This old hospital seemed even creepier tonight, although this wouldn’t be the first time a killer had moved through these halls. He could almost feel the ghosts of those who had walked these halls before him. Kate’s aunt, for one. And probably her sister, who had come here to find out what had happened to Katherine.

  Who else? he wondered as he neared the nursery. Who was waiting for him?

  He thought he could smell the person’s anxiety, a mixture of fear and anger and regret. But it was thoughts of Kate that had his heart pounding. She had to be all right.

  He stopped just before he reached the nursery. He knew that the killer had heard him approaching. He had to know if Kate was okay. “Kate?”

  “Cyrus?” He heard both relief and fear in her voice. “Cyrus, don’t—”

  “Shut up,” he heard someone order in a hoarse whisper. “We’re waiting for you,” said the muffled voice.

  Cyrus stepped around the corner and into the old hospital nursery, just as he had that night in his dream.

  Only this time he knew the woman on the floor.

  “SO YOU’RE THE DREAMER,” the man in the mask said as he pointed the gun in his hand at Kate’s head. “Drop your weapon on the floor and kick it over to me…. Join your girlfriend.”

  The man wore a monster mask, his voice muffled behind it. Pale blue eyes peered out of the holes. Cyrus could smell the fear coming off the man and see his nerves showing in the way he held the gun.

  “Why don’t you take off the mask,” Cyrus said as he moved over to where Kate was on the floor. He sensed the man was hiding behind the mask, not to conceal his identity, but to distance himself from what he was about to do.

  “Sit down next to her,” the man ordered, waving the gun.

  “What’s the point of the mask since you plan to kill us anyway?” Cyrus said. Kill us, then kill himself, would be his guess from the jumpy way the man was acting.

  “I told you to sit down.”

  “Not until you take off the mask and tell me what the hell this is about.”

  “You are in no position to make demands,” the man said angrily, his words losing a lot of their power, muffled as they were behind the mask.

  Cyrus could see that the man was trying to prepare himself for what he was about to do. Otherwise he would have shot Cyrus the moment he came through the nursery door.

  They stood glaring at each other, the gun shaking in the man’s trembling hand. He was no killer, but Cyrus suspected he’d felt forced to kill before—and would again. He’d known the killer had nothing to lose. He realized with a start that was even more true of the man standing before him.

  “I know who you are, Audie,” Cyrus said. “Audie Dennison.”

  Audie started, clearly surprised that Cyrus knew who he was. With a furious curse, he ripped the mask from his face.

  On the floor next to Cyrus, Kate let out a gasp. “He’s the man I saw out at Joanna McCormick’s ranch. He was shoeing a horse out there and eavesdropping on our conversation,” Kate said as she pushed herself to her feet.

  “I told you to stay down,” Audie cried, waving the gun at her.

  Kate didn’t listen. Like Cyrus, Kate had to see that Audie was losing his control over them. She looked scared but unhurt and he couldn’t have loved her more than he did at that moment.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he wanted to tell her. But he couldn’t be sure about that. “I love you,” he said.

  She glanced over at him and smiled, tears welling in her eyes. “It’s about time you realized that.”

  “Both of you,” Audie ordered, looking scared that he was losing control of this situation, “sit down—”

  “Not until you tell us what this is about,” Cyrus interrupted. “Don’t you owe us that much?”

  “Owe you?” Audie bellowed. “Do you know how much pain you’ve caused my sister with your questions and your stupid dream?” His voice broke and tears filled his eyes, but Cyrus knew better than to try to take the gun away from him. At least not yet.

  “What happened all those years ago?” Kate asked quietly.

  Audie looked at her and Cyrus saw the man weaken. Clearly he wanted to get this over with, and yet the magnitude of what he was about to do had him hesitating.

  “You did it for your sister,” Kate said, her voice soft, comforting.

  “Katherine told you about someone paying her five thousand dollars to switch the babies,” Cyrus prodded.

  “Five thousand?” Audie was shaking his head as if confused.

  So she hadn’t told him about the money. “You encouraged her to do it, knowing how much your sister wanted a baby, deserved one, unlike Virginia Winchester,” Kate said, still speaking to him in that calm tone.

  Audie’s confusion seemed to clear as he locked onto her words. “That tramp Virginia had no business with a baby. She wasn’t even married.”

  “But then Katherine changed her mind,” Cyrus said. “She betrayed you.”

  A sadness filled the man’s eyes along with a deep anger. “I loved her. I would have done anything for her. She promised. I heard her talking to her sister on the phone by the nurses’ station. She’d left the cart with the medical supplies in the hallway. I didn’t even realize I’d picked up the scalpel.”

  “You had no choice but to kill her sister, too,” Cyrus said.

  “You’re the one who left the bracelet on my grandmother’s doorstep,” Kate said.

  “It was a foolish, sentimental thing to do,” Audie admitted. “But I couldn’t throw it away and I couldn’t keep it, either.”

  Kate began to cry softly.

  “I couldn’t let it come out about the babies,” Audie said angrily. “Marie was so happy. Of course she was sad about Virginia’s baby dying. Marie is that kind of woman. I owed her. I had to do whatever it took to make her happy.”

  “And you did,” Cyrus said. “Roberta Warren must have known it was you. Was she threatening you? Is that why you had to stop her?”

  Audie blinked. “That old hag at the hospital?”

  Cyrus felt his stomach clinch. Audie Dennison hadn’t killed Roberta. Nor had he known about the five thousand dollars that had changed hands. “Whose idea was it to switch the babies? Who paid Katherine to do it?”

  IT TOOK MCCALL too long to find Jasmine in the depths of the haunted house. “Where are Kate and Cyrus?”

  Jasmine looked surprised and instantly worried. “Cyrus said he sent her to a motel and that he was going to join her. I thought it was odd. No way would Kate have left her haunted house before it even got started good.” Her eyes widened in realization.

  “You’ve been right h
ere since the haunted house opened, right?” McCall said. “Who came through at the beginning?”

  Jasmine frowned, clearly working to remember. She rattled off a few names of families she remembered. “Wait a minute. The first person who came in didn’t even have a kid with him. I thought it was funny, but I figured he must be a volunteer Kate had recruited and he was late and that’s why he rushed in the way he did.”

  “Jasmine, who—”

  “Audie Dennison.”

  AUDIE FROWNED. “How would I know who paid her to switch the babies?” he demanded. “I thought she was doing it out of the goodness of her heart. I was going to marry her…” He was waving the gun again, clearly upset. “I was in love.” His gaze seemed to focus on the two of them. “Like you.” His voice broke.

  “Audie,” Cyrus said, seeing something in the man’s eyes that turned his blood to ice.

  “My sister Marie died tonight.”

  Before Cyrus could move, Audie turned the gun on himself. The loud report echoed through the nursery, a thunder of pain-ending sound.

  Cyrus grabbed Kate, sheltering her from the sight as Audie Dennison dropped to the floor, his gun clattering to the worn tiles. And Cyrus found himself again standing in the old hospital nursery with a body lying in a pool of blood.

  As he took Kate in his arms, he heard the sound of sirens in the distance.

  Epilogue

  Kate heard the racket outside the front door of the shop and hurried to see what was going on. She hadn’t seen Cyrus all morning and now when she looked out, she caught a glimpse of him through the thickly falling snow.

  As she opened the door, he dragged in a Christmas tree and stood it up for her inspection. “So, what do you think?” Both he and the tree were covered in fresh snow. She breathed in the scent of pine and snow.

  What did she think? That she loved this man more than life.