Sidetracked-Kobo

by Brandilyn Collins

  SIDETRACKED

  Brandilyn Collins

  Sidetracked

  Copyright 2014 Brandilyn Collins

  Challow Press

  212 W. Ironwood Dr., Suite D

  #316

  Coeur d’Alene, ID 83814

  All rights reserved

  Author name logo by DogEared Design

  Cover design by Dugan Design

  PRAISE FOR NOVELS

  BY BRANDILYN COLLINS

  “Heart-pounding suspense … an exciting, highly original plot.”

  --RT Book Reviews, Sidetracked

  “A nail-biting thrill ride from start to finish.”

  --RT Book Reviews, Dark Justice

  "Collins has written another taut, compelling tale of psychological suspense that weaves a twisty plot with threads of faith."

  --Library Journal Starred Review, Double Blind

  “Moves along briskly … the popular novelist’s talent continues to flower.”

  --Publishers Weekly, Gone to Ground

  “A taut, heartbreaking thriller … Collins is a fine writer who knows to both horrify readers and keep them turning pages.”

  --Publishers Weekly, Over the Edge

  “Solidly constructed … a strong and immediately likeable protagonist … one of the Top 10 Inspirational Novels of 2010.”

  --Booklist, Deceit

  “A hefty dose of action and suspense with a superb conclusion.”

  --RT Book Reviews, Exposure

  “Intense. Engaging. Whiplash-inducing plot twists.”

  --Thrill Writer, Dark Pursuit

  “A harrowing hostage drama.”

  --Library Journal, Amber Morn

  “One of the Best Books of 2007 … Top Christian suspense of the year.”

  --Library Journal Starred Review, Crimson Eve

  “A chilling mystery … not one to be read alone at night.”

  --RT BOOKclub, Coral Moon

  “A sympathetic heroine … effective flashbacks … Collins knows how to weave faith into a rich tale.”

  --Library Journal, Violet Dawn

  “A master storyteller … Collins deftly finesses the accelerator on this knuckle-chomping ride.”

  --RT BOOKclub, Web of Lies

  “Finely crafted … vivid … another masterpiece that keeps the reader utterly engrossed.”

  --RT BOOKclub, Dread Champion

  “Chilling … a confusing, twisting trail that keeps pages turning.”

  --Publishers Weekly, Eyes of Elisha

  "[This book] has it all: complex and realistic family dynamics, hilarity, romance, solid marital advice, an eclectic cast of characters, and an adorable Yorkie. You will be anticipating the sequel."

  --RT Book Reviews, That Dog Won’t Hunt

  “By far one of the best books I’ve read this year.”

  --RT Book Reviews 4 ½ stars Gold, Top Pick, Cast a Road Before Me

  “Excellent novel … beautifully written … well developed characters.”

  --Publishers Weekly, Color the Sidewalk for Me

  “Strong writing … the characters are interesting, and Collins pens some worthy descriptions.”

  --Publishers Weekly, Capture the Wind for Me

  BOOKS BY

  BRANDILYN COLLINS

  Suspense

  Stand Alone Novels

  Sidetracked

  Dark Justice

  Gone to Ground

  Over the Edge

  Deceit

  Exposure

  Dark Pursuit

  Rayne Tour YA Series

  (co-written with Amberly Collins)

  Always Watching

  Last Breath

  Final Touch

  Kanner Lake Series

  Violet Dawn

  Coral Moon

  Crimson Eve

  Amber Morn

  Hidden Faces Series

  Brink of Death

  Stain of Guilt

  Dead of Night

  Web of Lies

  Chelsea Adams Series

  Eyes of Elisha

  Dread Champion

  Southern Contemporary

  Bradleyville Series

  Cast a Road Before Me

  Color the Sidewalk for Me

  Capture the Wind for Me

  Dearing Family Series

  That Dog Won’t Hunt

  Pitchin’ a Fit

  Non-Fiction

  Getting Into Character:

  Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn From Actors

  For Delanie,

  beautiful inside and out

  “You keep trusting in deceitful words

  that cannot help.”

  -- Jeremiah 7:8

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  A Note From Brandilyn

  Acknowledgments

  Over The Edge Preview

  April 2013

  Chapter 1

  In the beginning comes the end.

  April in Redbud, Kentucky brings to full bloom the trees that give our town its name. Pink blossoms against blue sky. Daffodils push up yellow and sassy. Lilies are still in stem but boast lush promise. Tulips splash the yards, multicolored and fragile. Spring days are warm without summer’s humid oppression. The time of renewal.

  Spring was my favorite season. Once.

  In the dark just after nine-thirty I drove away from the town’s Methodist church, a white wooden building with a tall steeple. I was the last to leave Clara Ann Crenshaw’s wedding shower, having stayed around to clean up. After all, I was the one who’d thrown the party for Clara. She had left a few minutes before, her car chock full of presents. The rest she’d left behind to pick up the following day. I locked them up in the church.

  Clara was twenty-two, vibrant and in love with life. In love with Jerald Allen, too, who would become her husband in June. The church hall had been full of her friends, young and old. The rip of wrapping paper, laughter, and clink of forks against cake plates vibrated in the air. A true celebration. Clara wore her signature bright blue to match her sparkling eyes. Rosy-cheeked, she hugged me hard before she left. “You’re next, Delanie,” she whispered in my ear. “Mrs. Andrew Bradshaw.”

  I smiled. Andy had carried that look in his eye lately. I hoped I was reading him right. I was thirty-four already and so wanted to be his wife. Build my own real family—even though it would mean breaking up the pseudo one I’d gathered around me. Folks in town just knew Andy and I would be married before the year was out.

  When you live in a town of twenty-five hundred, everyone assumes your business is the
irs.

  I drove out of the church’s parking lot and rolled down quiet Chester Avenue. Streetlights spilled over the tree-lined sidewalks. No one else in sight. Redbud always shuts itself up early. At Walton Street I went left, my house about a half mile away. One block over ran Main Street—the home of quaint shops and cafes. For a small town, Redbud had built quite a local reputation on its fancy-painted store fronts. Many from around the area came to browse through the town’s shops and dine in its homey restaurants.

  Brewer approached. I turned onto it—and saw a shadow on the street. Faint, fleeting. Until it materialized again and went still, as if trying not to be seen. Washed pale by the umbra of a streetlamp, it looked like a man’s form, wearing a baseball cap, hands raised to his chest. Legs apart, as though ready to run.

  A chill needled my bones.

  I slowed the car. Slid my gaze left toward the source of the shadow. He stood by a front yard bush as tall as he, backlit by the house’s front porch light. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I felt them lock onto me.

  A forever second ticked by.

  He swiveled and ran toward the back of the house. Disappeared into the night.

  I braked to a stop. Peered into the darkness, looking for him.

  He was gone.

  Was this a robber? We had so little crime in our town. But this man was too out of place, too … raw. I was well acquainted with sudden trauma. Knew the feel, the smell of it. And this wasn’t right.

  Lights were on in the house, a form moving behind closed blinds. I didn’t know who lived there. But maybe I should knock on their door, warn them—

  My eye caught some … thing lying on the sidewalk three houses up.

  The chill inside me crackled to ice. For the longest moment I could only stare at the object. How frighteningly familiar it looked. A silent scream wracked my head. No, no, no!

  But deep within I knew. Death had followed me.

  Heart rattling, I surged my car up close to the form. The wash of my headlights confirmed the knowledge borne of my past. A body. Crumpled on its side, facing away from the street.

  I veered to the curb and shoved my car into Park. Jumped out and threw myself on my knees beside the body—and recognized the bright blue shirt. My legs went weak.

  Some say memory blurs when you’re shocked beyond belief. Not mine. I still remember every detail of that moment. The roughness of the sidewalk against my palms, the spill of Clara’s blonde hair, the way the fingers on her one hand curled inward. A cry formed in the back of my throat but couldn’t pass my clenched teeth.

  The world started to go black. I fought the dizziness. Wrenched myself into a strength I didn’t feel.

  With reluctant hands I pushed Clara onto her back, knowing I was too late. Her eyes were open, stunned. Unmoving. I grunted out her name, laid the backs of my fingers on both sides of her neck, seeking a pulse.

  Nothing.

  From the light of a street lamp I could see bruises on the front of her throat.

  I threw back my head, sick to the core, the world again spinning. Grief and rage surged through my veins, nearly tipping me over. I struggled to steady myself. To think.

  Help her! Give CPR!

  But it was too late for that. And I shouldn’t stay here. A terrible and selfish thought, but there it was.

  My wild eyes looked around and saw no one. But then I’d already seen the culprit, hadn’t I? The man standing in that yard, fading into darkness.

  I drew an arm across my forehead—and my gaze snagged on a car some distance up the street. Clara’s. Sitting at the curb, driver’s door hanging open, no headlights on. Why had she gotten out of it here, and in such a hurry? Her house was across town. Had she turned off the lights? Or had her attacker done that?

  Vaguely, then, I heard the sound. The engine was still running.

  On some other plane, my legs pushed me up. I stumbled to my car. Thrashed about in my purse, seeking my cell phone. Yanked it out. Twice my finger hit 922, and I had to erase.

  Then my hand froze.

  What was I doing? I couldn’t call this in. No matter that I was innocent, had simply found Clara here. That everyone in town knew me as caring and loving.

  I needed to drive away while there was still time. Let someone else find her.

  My limbs shivered at the appalling idea. How dare I even think it? This was Clara. My good friend. So what if my carefully constructed world could come cracking apart? Wasn’t it enough that I hadn’t saved her? That I’d let her leave five minutes before me?

  I could have stopped this.

  Time staggered. Years of pain and fear and loneliness tumbled in my head. Still, despite all I’d lived through, no way could I run from this, leaving Clara here, silent and alone.

  Tears came then, washing hot.

  Trembling yet determined, my finger punched in the searing digits. Nine. One. One. Blurry-eyed and stricken, I clutched the phone to my ear.

  As the number began to ring I prayed for Clara’s family, then begged God to protect me in this. To save me.

  But I’d prayed that before, years ago. Little good it had done.

  Chapter 2

  I slumped in a hard chair in an interrogation room at the Redbud Police Station, a rough green blanket over my shoulders. My body couldn’t stop shivering. Bruce Melcher, Chief of Police, sat across the square table from me, recording my story and taking notes. The door to the room stood open. I had no idea what time it was. Hadn’t the energy to check my watch. We must have spent at least an hour at the crime scene, Melcher and two of his officers, Hank Shire and Edna Rankle, showing up. Then the ambulance and the coroner. Not to mention people from up and down the street and blocks away as word spread. Yellow crime scene tape kept them back as Hank snapped pictures of Clara’s body, the surrounding sidewalk, her car. Finally she was loaded up and carried away.

  Shock set into me and numbed over my grief. Just like that a life—stopped. Everything on the brink for her now dead. All plans unraveled. My thoughts since then had been jumbled and random. Some ridiculously trite. How would Jerald Allen live through losing his fiancée? Who was the man I’d seen, and why had he done this? What would happen to the wedding shower presents?

  What would happen to me?

  I’d followed the Chief to the station in my car. By the time he sat me down I was shivering. I’d never been in the station before. Even in Redbud, where almost everyone was friendly, I avoided cops. Especially Bruce Melcher. The man had a way about him. Macho and ego-ridden. As though the town belonged to him, and if you didn’t believe it, he’d prove it to you. People in Redbud seemed to either love or hate their chief of police. Somehow he kept his position.

  I needed Andy. Wanted his arms around me, his love-filled voice telling me it would be okay. He’d been in Frankfort that evening, working on one of his real estate deals. Someone was bound to call him—

  “Anything else you can remember?” Melcher sat back, his round face still grim. Our chief of police was in his forties, his brown hair turning gray, hazel eyes small but keen. A stocky man with little humor. Had he ever worked a homicide before? The town hadn’t seen one in over thirty years, so one of the other policemen told me. Redbud, Kentucky lay off Highway 60, eight miles northwest of Versailles and about twenty-one miles from Lexington—which saw a lot of crime. Our little town was a world apart from that city. Our townsfolk who worked in Lexington liked to come home to the quiet, the familiar sidewalks cracked from old oak trees. The safety.

  They wouldn’t feel safe anymore.

  “Nothing else to tell.” I’d related it all three times now. “Has someone called Jerald? And Clara’s parents?”

  “Hank went over to the Crenshaws soon as he could. Tried to beat someone else calling the family. He phoned Jerald first and asked him to be there.”

  I winced. What a task for Hank, such an empathetic man. As for Clara’s family and fiancé, I knew the pain they would endure. T
he stone-cold nights and brittle days.

  Up front in the station a phone rang for the dozenth time. Vaguely, I heard Edna’s no-nonsense voice answer. A moment later she appeared at the threshold, receiver cupped in her hand. “It’s Pete Baler, worried about Delanie. Says she’s late coming home and isn’t answering her cell phone, and what in tarnation is happening over on Brewer?”

  Pete, my adopted grandfather. Doyen of the cobbled-together family who shared my house. I’d heard my cell ring numerous times in my purse. I should have known he’d be checking up on me. Probably had Nicole and Colleen gathered around him, just as worried.

  Melcher sighed. “You want to talk to Pete?”

  I shook my head. “Can you just tell him I’m here and safe? I’ll be home soon.” Somehow I’d have to find the energy to explain to him what happened. If he hadn’t heard by then.

  Edna nodded and turned away, pulling the phone back to her ear. I heard her arguing with Pete as she walked toward the front. No, she was too busy to fill in all the details for him now. No, I wasn’t hurt …

  I stared at the worn wooden table, wondering how I’d gotten here. Where this night might take me.

  Nowhere, Delanie. This is different. You’ll be fine.

  The station door burst open. I heard the pound of feet, the familiar voice that made my heart surge. “Where is she?”

  “Back there.”

  I struggled up straight, sudden tears biting my eyes. Andy’s broad shoulders filled the doorway, his brown hair mussed and face blanched. He took one look at me and rushed forward, holding out his arms. I pushed up on weak legs and threw myself against his chest, the blanket falling to the floor. Sobs broke from me, deep and helpless, wetting the front of his starched shirt. I could do nothing but cling to Andy—for more reasons than he could possibly know.