Chapter Nineteen
My eyes filled with tears at what I saw in that little velvet box. I didn’t need to ask him why he had it or how he’d gotten it. I instinctively knew, and that fact sickened me.
“I had planned this to go a lot smoother, but this will have to do,” Nate said as he took my wedding band out of the box and held it up in front of his face to examine it.
“You killed him! How could you do that? Why?” I screamed from behind the duct tape.
Somehow, Nate understood what I said and began to explain why he did it. Or maybe he’d just been waiting for the chance to tell me his story.
He stared at my wedding band like it meant something special to him, but then his expression grew dark as he read the inscription that Alex and I had Samuel put inside. “You deserve to be with someone who doesn’t put you in harm’s way, Poppy. You should be at home right now.”
I’d be at home, you murderous maniac, if you weren’t holding me hostage!
“I have watched you for a long time. I don’t think you knew that, but I did. You were one of the only people who was nice to me when I’d come home from that horrible place my parents sent me for all those years. I never forgot that, Poppy.”
“Then why are you holding me here like this?” I asked, my words garbled from the tape over my lips.
He either didn’t care to know what I said or just ignored it so he could speak the words he’d obviously waited some time to say to me. I listened to him as he spoke, horrified at the reality that poor Samuel Morrow had lost his life because Nate had harbored some sick fantasy about me all these years.
“Then when my father finally let me have this store, you would come in and you were that same sweet girl you’d always been all those years ago. Always a smile for people. I knew there was sadness behind that smile, though. I heard what that Jared did to you.”
Nate stopped talking and shook his head. I watched as he swallowed hard before he continued with what he wanted to say.
“I want you to know that I did everything I could to make his life miserable every minute he worked for me. I did that for you.”
I thought to myself, “Why didn’t you tie him up instead of me then?” It wasn’t right, but with every second that ticked by and no one came into the store, I began to get desperate.
“Then you began dating that cop and all I could think of was that you were going to be hurt. You were investigating crimes and solving cases with him, and all the while I worried something would happen to you. I was so worried about you that I watched your house most nights to be sure nobody hurt you.”
That explained the movement I saw in the bushes the other night and the footprint in the dirt. Nate had been there watching me, I realized in horror.
He stopped for a moment and then lifted my wedding band up in front of me. “Then you two got engaged. I saw you in Samuel’s store picking out rings, and I knew you’d end up hurt.”
Nate leaned down and brushed my hair away from my face. I closed my eyes, afraid of what he’d do next, but he simply finished and stood up again and continued with what he had to say.
“I just wanted to see the ring. That’s all. Samuel had your ring out that morning and I only wanted to see it for a moment. But he wouldn’t let me. He said I should come back here and do my work. He was never nice to me.”
Lifting my chin, I shook my head back and forth and begged him to take the tape off my mouth. When he frowned and said no, I couldn’t help but let the tears flow I’d been fighting since he tied my hands.
They rolled down my cheeks and into the tape, soaking it. Nate watched as I sobbed, looking uncomfortable and wincing with every moment he had to see me cry.
Nate reached out and stroked my cheek, making me sob even harder as the thought of what he planned to do to me settled into my brain.
“Don’t cry, Poppy. Don’t cry.”
Finally, it got to be too much for him and he gently tore the tape from my skin. As he tossed it into the garbage beneath the bench, I stretched my lips to stop the pain of the stinging from where the tape had been stuck to my skin.
“There. See? You don’t have to cry. You’re safe with me.”
I looked at Nate Cardow in horror as he stood there in front of me holding the ring he’d killed for and talking to me like everything would be fine now. Turning away, I shut my eyes and uttered the truth I’d have to wrestle with for the rest of my life.
“You killed him for my ring. How could you do that?”
“He wouldn’t let me see it!” Nate bellowed, making me jump in the chair. “I just wanted to see it. Why wouldn’t he let me just see it? That’s all he had to do.”
I had nothing to say to that. What could be said? Nate Cardow had lost his mind, clearly. I didn’t know why he’d fixated on me. Maybe because I’d been nice to him when he was a teenager. I had no idea.
All I knew was Samuel Morrow had been murdered in cold blood over my wedding band. How could I ever even look at that ring again knowing what happened?
“Poppy, you can’t be unhappy. Finally, we can be together,” Nate said in a soft voice that sounded like he was trying not to scare me.
It didn’t work.
Turning to face him, I saw a look of hope in his eyes. How on earth could he think we could ever be together?
“I’m engaged, Nate. Alex and I are getting married next month. Alex and I are together.”
His face grew dark, and he shook his head quickly and breathed hard in and out through his nose. “You can’t be with him. You’ll get hurt. He has a gun. You can get hurt by that gun. You can’t be with him, Poppy.”
“Nate, I won’t get hurt. I promise. Alex would never hurt me. He wouldn’t. If you care at all about me, you’ll let me go so I can leave here and be happy. You do care for me, Nate, don’t you? I’ve always been nice to you, haven’t I?”
I spoke quickly, hoping to get all the words out before he stopped me or slapped another piece of tape over my mouth. He listened to me and heard every one of them, nodding as I got to the end of my questions.
“You’ve always been nice to me, Poppy. That’s why I love you. You’re sweet and you’re kind and you like me. I can tell by the way you used to smile at me when you were a little girl that you liked me. Don’t be angry at me, Poppy.”
Shaking my head, I forced myself to smile. Nate was confusing my terror for anger, and I had a feeling I didn’t want to see his reaction to real anger coming from me.
“I’m not angry, Nate, but you have me tied up and the ropes are hurting me. Can you untie me and then we can talk?” I asked with wide eyes as I looked up at him.
He seemed to think about it for a moment and then shook his head. “Not yet, but I promise, you won’t always be tied up. I wouldn’t do that to you, Poppy.”
A noise coming from the front of the store made us both turn our attention toward the door of the stockroom. I strained to listen to what it was and heard a voice say, “Hello? Is anyone here?”
It was Alex’s voice!
Frantic, I yelled, “Alex, I’m back here! He’s got me back here!”
Before I could say anything else, Nate hurriedly ripped off another piece of duct tape and stuck it over my mouth, silencing me. I tried to speak again—to make any noise Alex might here—but my muffled sounds weren’t loud enough to travel all the way to the front of the store.
Nate ran up to the door, and with one last glance back at me, walked out to talk to him like nothing at all strange was going on in the back room. With my heartbeat slamming in my ears, I listened as well as I could to what the two men were saying. Alex had to know something was wrong when I hadn’t come out and waved on the sidewalk.
He had to know I was in trouble.
I heard his voice and knew he sensed something when he used his deep police voice to speak to Nate.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Cardow. I’m looking for Poppy. I saw her walk into this store a few minutes ago, but I didn’t see her leave. Do you
know where she is?”
“I’m back here!” I screamed through the tape, my words barely audible.
“I was busy with a customer, so she might have left then. Did you check the other stores nearby?” Nate answered in a shaky voice.
Alex said nothing for a long moment, and I knew he suspected something was wrong with this situation. I imagined he stood there at the counter looking around for evidence that I’d been there, but he’d find none.
My only chance was to keep yelling and hope he heard me. I inhaled a deep breath through my nose and began screaming the words, “I’m here” over and over until my throat became raw. My head pounded from the fear that no matter how much I yelled, he’d never hear me. My voice wouldn’t carry because of the damn tape covering my mouth.
Panicked he might leave, I looked down at the chair and the bench nearby. If I could knock the chair into that bench, maybe that would make a loud enough noise for him to come back. In my terror, I somehow picked up the chair even with my hands tied behind my back and my body tied to the chair and began slamming the chair into the bench as hard as I could. Pain tore through my shoulders and down my arms as my body moved in ways it wasn’t meant to, but each time I ran the chair into that wooden bench, the banging noise became louder and louder.
I coupled that sound with my screams of help over and over, and finally I saw the stockroom door open. With sweat pouring down into my eyes making it hard to see, I made out a figure but quickly realized it wasn’t Alex but Nate.
My heart sank. Alex had left the store without checking the back room. He hadn’t heard any of the sounds I’d tried so hard to make.
Defeated, I hung my head and began to cry. What would Nate do to me now?
“You shouldn’t have made all that noise back here while I was out there talking to that police officer, Poppy,” he said, actually scolding me for trying to save my own life.
I didn’t respond. I didn’t try to stop my tears either. After everything that had happened—Samuel’s murder, my ring being the cause of it, Jared’s taking my position at the paper and his taunting me into believing Alex might be getting cold feet—after all of that and now to be tied up and held hostage by the person who’d killed poor Samuel Morrow over my wedding band, I wanted to cry. I’d get out of that stockroom somehow, no matter what it took, but for that moment, I just wanted to cry.
Suddenly, I heard a noise on the wall next to me. Someone was outside banging on the building. I looked up and saw Nate rushing toward an old wooden door that went out to the back of the store. Before he could get there, the door flew open and Alex rushed in with his gun drawn.
“Get down on the ground! Down on the ground!”
Nate spun on his heels and tried to run away, but Alex leaped forward on top of him and tackled him to the floor. Pinning his hands behind his back, he handcuffed him and said, “Nate Cardow, you’re under arrest for kidnapping and anything else I can think to charge you with.”
As he read him his rights, I took a deep breath and smiled behind the duct tape still covering my mouth. All my screaming and banging had worked. Alex has heard me and knew I was in trouble.
Alex had saved me.
He stood Nate up on his feet and called Derek on the radio for backup. “I’m up at Cardow’s Shoe Store. Come around the back. Nate had Poppy tied up here. I’ve got him in cuffs, but I need you to take him.”
Still holding onto Nate, Alex walked over to me and carefully removed the duct tape from my mouth. “Are you okay?” he asked in that tender voice I decided right then and there that I loved more than any other tone he ever used.
I nodded and stretched my lips to stop the stinging once again. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
A second later, the ropes tying me to the chair and around my hands fell to the floor. I stood up and looked at Nate standing there in handcuffs.
“He killed Samuel over my ring. He admitted it to me,” I told Alex, sad to admit the truth.
My partner looked at Nate and nodded. “Murder, theft, and kidnapping. You’re going away for a long time.”
He got no response, but Nate looked at me and said, “You were always so nice to me, Poppy. I just wanted you to see you were right for doing that. I wanted you to see I loved you.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. In Nate Cardow’s twisted mind, everything he’d done had been to show me how much he cared for me. That love, as he called it, had caused the death of Samuel Morrow and led to him holding me hostage, tied up in his stockroom. I didn’t know if I hated him for what he did or pitied him for what he thought was love.
Maybe what I felt was a combination of both.
Derek arrived to take Nate into custody, and I saw the shock on his face when he saw me standing next to the ropes on the chair. He didn’t say anything but just yanked Nate out of the building and led him to the police car.
Alone, Alex pulled me into his arms and squeezed me tightly to him. He pressed a kiss to the top of my head and whispered, “Thank God you’re all right. I wanted to kill him when I came through that door and saw you sitting there with that tape on your mouth tied up to that chair.”
I leaned my cheek against his heart and heard it beating still so fast. “I’m okay. I don’t think he ever wanted to hurt me. He just had some twisted fantasy that he loved me and thought we’d be together.”
Tilting my head back, Alex looked down and I saw real fear in his eyes. “I don’t know what I would have done if he’d…”
He didn’t finish his thought and kissed me instead, cradling my face in his hands as he sweetly pressed his lips to mine. I knew as hard as this had been on me, it was hard on him too, maybe even worse because of what had happened to Helena. I didn’t want him to live in terror that he’d lose me just because I wanted to fancy myself a cop. I couldn’t do that anymore.
So it was time to let him know I’d made a decision.
Looking up at him, I smiled and straightened the collar on his uniform. “This was my last case, Alex.”
I didn’t know how I’d expected him to react, but seeing his dark eyebrows come in and an angry expression come over his face surprised me. Why wasn’t he happy?
“You love doing this, Poppy. Don’t let my worrying about you stop you from doing something that truly makes you happy. I’m a big boy. I’ll handle it.”
But I’d made up my mind. I had something different in mind for my future with him solving crimes.
“No, what happened here with Nate showed me that I want to do something else that involves working with you on cases. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I had planned to ask you how you felt about me doing it in addition to working with you. Now plans have just changed a bit.”
A smile spread across his lips and lit up those dark brown eyes I loved so much. “Something else that will still involve working with me on police cases? What’s that?”
“Let’s go to The Grounds and you can buy me a much needed coffee. I’ll tell you all about my idea there.”
“After we go to the station first so I can get your statement. You aren’t just someone working on the case this time, Poppy. You’re going to be the state’s star witness because Nate confessed to you. But I promise after we get done, we’ll head straight over to The Grounds.”
I tugged him by the arm and we walked out into the beautiful sunny May day. Just as we reached the police car parked in front of Cardow’s Shoe Store, Alex kissed me and opened my door for me.
“Tonight, we’re going to Diamanti’s too. I think it’s time to celebrate.”
Confused, I looked up at him as I sat down in the passenger seat. “What are we celebrating?”
Smiling, he said, “Whatever you’re about to tell me over coffee.”
I watched him walk around the car and couldn’t help but love that even though he had no idea what I was about to tell him, he was enthusiastic about it. That man who’d threatened to shoot me that first night at his house had turned into my biggest fan.
&
nbsp; It seemed only right. I’d been his since that first case.
He slid in behind the wheel, and I touched him on the arm. “What do you think about going to Diamanti’s another night?”
“Sure. Whatever you want.”
As he started the car, I sighed. “It’s been a rough day. All I want to do is curl up in your arms tonight.”
Alex turned to look at me and smiled. “I like the way you think. A night in it is.”
Chapter Twenty
The first notes of the wedding march began to play, signaling it was time to leave the tiny wood paneled classroom at the church that doubled as my dressing room for the ceremony. I took one last look at my dress and makeup in the full length mirror propped up against a bookcase and looked back at my father who stood in the doorway.
“That’s our cue,” I said nervously.
“You look beautiful, honey. I wish your mother could see this day. She would have loved it,” he said with a tear in his eye.
I looked at my reflection one more time and couldn’t help but see my mother looking back at me. So much of her lived in me. I touched my cheek and smiled at the way she used to describe my skin as her words echoed in my head.
“You have a peaches and cream complexion, Poppy, just like me.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to calm myself as wedding day jitters threatened to make me pass out. All the work over the months Alex and I had spent planning this day, and now it was here and I was a nervous wreck.
“I’m not sure my legs are going to hold me up, Dad. I’m shaking like a leaf,” I said as I took hold of his hand and clung to him we walked out into the hallway.
He stopped at the doors that led into the church and clasped two hands around mine, covering it as he bent down to kiss me on the cheek. “Don’t worry. I’ve got you, honey.”
We stood there for a moment before the doors opened and the organist began playing the wedding march one more time for me to walk down the aisle to Alex. He stood waiting for me dressed in a black tux and looking more handsome than I’d ever seen him before. He was flanked by Derek in his matching tux, and on the other side of the aisle, Holly stood looking gorgeous in her pink bridesmaid’s dress we’d searched so long to find.
The Finest Hour Page 20