She opened her eyes just in time to see Jake hit the man once...twice...three times so hard in the jaw, the man fell backward and onto the floor. Jake immediately leaned down and held his gun at the man’s temple. He pulled back on the hammer.
“No, Jake,” she said between coughs. “Don’t kill him.”
“I want to.” Jake’s voice shook with his rage. “I want to kill him for hurting you, but I won’t.” He released the hammer without shooting but kept his gun pointed at the intruder.
“Get up before I change my mind.” He reached down and yanked the man up by the front of his black shirt.
Jake pulled his phone out of his back pocket and slid it across the floor to where Eva had sat up. “Eva, honey, call Wayne. We need to get this scum arrested and put away.”
As Jake continued to hold the man at gunpoint, Eva called Wayne. “Sheriff Black,” he answered on the second ring.
“Wayne, it’s Eva. We have him.” A sob of deep relief choked out of her. “He tried to kill me, but Jake has him and we need you to come out. We’re in the barn loft.”
“I’m on my way,” Wayne replied.
Eva hung up the phone and stared at the masked man who had just tried to take her life. There was no doubt that he was the same man who had mutilated her cattle and hung the bloody heart on her railing. He was the same man who had attacked her in the barn and had put fear in her son’s eyes.
“I need to know... I need to know who he is,” Eva said. “Pull his mask off.”
Jake reached out for the bottom of the ski mask, but the man pulled back from him. “I’ll pull that off you dead or alive,” Jake said angrily. He reached out once again and this time yanked off the ski mask.
Eva gasped in stunned surprise as she finally saw the face of her monster.
Chapter Thirteen
“David?” The very earth seemed to move beneath Jake’s feet as he stared at his brother. Confusion weighed heavy in Jake’s mind. Of all the people he’d expected to see, his brother was the very last. It didn’t make sense. “You? It’s been you behind all this?”
“I did it for you, Jake,” David said. “Come on, man. She’s nothing. She’s nobody. I was just trying to protect you.”
“Protect me?” Jake continued to stare at his brother in stunned shock. “Protect me from what?”
David looked down at his feet and then back at Jake. “I guess I haven’t been thinking clearly since Dad’s death.”
“You mutilated the first cow weeks before your father’s death,” Eva said.
David frowned and didn’t even acknowledge Eva’s presence with a glance in her direction. His dark gaze bored into Jake’s. “Jake, why don’t you just let me walk away from all this and we all can just forget what has happened?”
“Forget that you terrorized me for over two months?” Eva got to her feet and moved to stand next to Jake. Her voice was husky and her throat was red and bruised, threatening to make Jake’s anger rise up once again.
“Forget that you just tried to kill me?” Eva’s voice shook with emotion. “That if Jake hadn’t gotten here in time you would have succeeded?”
“Jake, just shoot her and let’s get out of here,” David said. “Come on, brother. Do the right thing. I’m your family.”
“Do the right thing? What in the hell is wrong with you?” Jake pulled Eva close against his side. “The right thing is you are going to be arrested, and you’re going to prison for a very long time.”
David’s eyes narrowed. “I gave her a chance to leave town. She should have heeded my warnings. She’s bad, Jake. She’s always been bad. She’s ruinous for you, and you should have nothing to do with her. She’s poison.”
“Is that why you did all this?” Jake was still trying to wrap his head around the fact that his brother was behind all the attacks, that his brother had just tried to kill Eva.
David’s face grew red with rage. “Don’t you get it, Jake? Even Dad knew she was no good for you, that she didn’t deserve to be anywhere around an Albright. And speaking of dear old Dad, while you were whooping it up in Italy, I was the one who had to suffer his foul moods and coldness. I was the one he mentally and verbally abused on a daily basis.”
“I’m sorry for that, David,” Jake replied. “But that doesn’t excuse what you’ve done.”
“You always defended Dad. You always tried to brownnose him, but he hated you as much as he hated me. He should have been sterile and never allowed to have children.”
David’s eyes glittered with utter hatred, and Jake couldn’t believe the kind of vitriol that had been inside his brother. “But you loved dear old Dad,” he continued. “Maybe you wouldn’t have loved him so much if you’d known that he was behind Eva breaking up with you all those years ago.”
Jake frowned and looked at Eva just in time to see all the color leave her face. “What’s he talking about, Eva?”
“We can talk about it later,” she replied. “Wayne should be here anytime. Maybe we should get down from the loft.”
Although Jake wanted to ask her about what David had said, he knew there would be time to talk to her after David was officially arrested.
“Eva, you go on down and then we’ll follow,” Jake instructed. He was still in shock that the person behind everything wasn’t Griff or Robert, but rather his own brother. And he still didn’t understand David’s reasoning for wanting Eva dead. There had to be more to it than David somehow trying to protect Jake from her.
“Just let me go before Wayne gets here,” David said as soon as Eva had left the loft. “You can tell him the man escaped and you never pulled off his ski mask. You can tell Wayne you still don’t know who the perp is.”
“And what about Eva?”
“Tell Wayne she’s lying about me. It would be your word against hers, and Wayne would believe an Albright over a poor piece of trash like Eva.”
Once again Jake looked at David as if he were a stranger—a very disturbed stranger. When he thought of David cutting the heart out of a cow, his brain threatened to explode. Who would have thought David had such evil inside him?
“Head downstairs,” he said. “And David, if you try to get away, I’ll shoot you in the leg. Don’t test me, because I promise you I’ll shoot.”
When they reached the main level of the barn, Eva waited for them, her face still pale and her throat a livid red that already had taken on shades of deep purple.
Jake’s chest tightened with a rage of his own. How dare David put a finger on the woman Jake loved? How dare he fill her life with the kind of fear Eva had experienced?
David must think Jake was totally crazy if he thought Jake was going to just let him go and forget all this. As much as he loved his brother, David had to go to jail and pay the consequences for what he had done.
At that moment Wayne and a couple of his deputies walked through the barn door. Wayne looked as surprised as anyone to see David.
“What’s going on here?” he asked.
“David tried to kill me,” Eva said, and a hand went to her throat. “He...he tried to strangle me.” Tears filled her eyes, along with a look of residual fear. “He’s behind it all, Wayne. He did it all. He killed my cattle and hung the heart, and this morning he broke through my back door with an ax and...and I managed to escape him, but I ran to the loft and then he tried to kill me by strangling me to death.”
The words rushed out of her as tears chased down her cheeks. Once again Jake pulled her against his side. “Whoa,” Wayne said. “We need to slow things down.”
“I just want him arrested. I...I don’t ever want to see him again.” Eva turned her face into Jake’s chest.
“Wayne, they’re both crazy,” David said. “You know me. I’m an Albright, and if you put me under arrest, I can promise you that you’ll be sorry.”
“David, we’ve always gotten along, but
I’m the law. I really don’t give a damn if you’re an Albright or the governor of this state. If you broke the law, then you have to pay the consequences.” He nodded at the two deputies with him.
They placed David in handcuffs, and David exploded in rage. “Why didn’t you just die?” he screamed at Eva. “My son is a real Albright, and he’s not going to share his inheritance with your bastard son or any children you might have. You aren’t Albright material—you’re nothing but trash.”
Jake frowned. Bastard son? What was he talking about? He looked at Eva. He hadn’t thought it was possible, but her face was now even whiter than it had been. Shock tried to work through him, but he fought against it. Surely David was mistaken in his thinking. He looked back at his brother. “Share an inheritance? So this was all about money?”
“Of course that’s what it was about,” David screamed, his face red and spittle flying. “It’s about money and power and keeping it where it belongs, with the rightful Albrights. Dad knew she was trash, and that’s why he got her to break up with you. But the minute you got back to town, you ran back to her like a dog in heat. I had to do something... I had to protect you from yourself.”
“Take him away,” Jake said in disgust. He couldn’t trust anything David was telling him. It was obvious his brother was deeply disturbed.
“I’ll need full statements from the two of you,” Wayne said once David had been led out of the barn by the two deputies. “Are you up to giving them to me now?”
“I want to get this behind me as soon as possible,” Eva said wearily. “So, let’s do it and get it done.”
They walked back to her house in silence. Jake’s brain tried to sort out everything that had happened, everything that had been said, but he was still in a numbing shock that it had been David who had committed all the crimes.
A glance at Eva let him know she was probably in the same mental space. Her face was still pale, and as she reached up to shove a strand of hair behind her ear, her fingers trembled.
They went through the front door, and Eva led Wayne into the kitchen. “I’ll be right back.” She left the room.
The sight of what was left of the splintered back door still shocked Jake. He couldn’t imagine the kind of terror that had to have filled Eva while David was breaking in with an ax.
“Hell of a mess,” Wayne said when Eva had left the kitchen. “I would have never suspected David.”
“I’m still in complete shock,” Jake admitted. “He was behind it all, Wayne. My own brother was killing cattle and tormenting Eva. My own brother tried to kill her.”
Eva came back into the kitchen wearing a robe over the thin nightgown she’d had on. She grabbed a broom from the pantry and began sweeping up the broken glass that littered the floor.
Wayne and Jake watched her for a minute or two. “Eva, come sit down,” Wayne finally said. “I need your full attention while you’re giving me your statement.”
“I’ll help you clean up later,” Jake said gently. “Come sit down and let’s get this over with.” She hesitated a moment and then returned the broom to the pantry and joined them at the table.
“Do either of you mind if I tape this?” Wayne asked. They both said no, and Wayne pulled a small tape recorder out of his pocket. He set it on the table, spoke into it with the time and date, and then looked at Eva. “Tell me what happened this morning from the very beginning.”
Her voice shook as she explained to Wayne about them oversleeping and Jake taking Andy to school. “When they were gone, I sat right here at the table and drank a cup of coffee, and then I started to leave the kitchen to get dressed for the day. I saw a person’s shadow at the back door, and I assumed it must be Harley. I wasn’t going to open the door until I was sure. So, I pulled up the blinds, and that’s when I saw him.”
The color that had crept back into her face faded once again. Jake reached over and captured her hand with his. Her fingers tightly squeezed his. “He had an ax, and he started hitting the door.”
Her voice became breathless as she told them about running for her gun and then David knocking the weapon out of her hands. She recounted him choking her in the hallway and her hitting him to get away.
“I ran to the barn and climbed into the loft, hoping and praying I could hide from him until Jake got back home. He almost killed me... I was about to lose consciousness when Jake showed up.”
“I got home and couldn’t find her,” Jake said. “When I saw the back door and didn’t find her anywhere in the house, I knew she must have run outside, but I had no idea where she might be.”
This time it was his fingers that squeezed hers. “I heard her scream and ran into the barn and realized she was up in the loft. I got up there and saw a man on top of her and strangling her.” Even now, knowing she was safe, his chest still tightened as he remembered that moment.
“I pulled him off her and punched him and then pulled my gun. I wanted to shoot him, Wayne. I wanted to kill him for what he’d done to Eva. I can’t believe it was David the whole time. I still can’t believe it.”
“He wasn’t even on a long list of suspects,” Wayne replied. “If he hadn’t been caught in the act, we probably would have never caught him.”
As Wayne and Eva continued to talk, Jake still tried to process that his brother had been behind everything, that David had actually tried to kill Eva. It was still difficult for him to comprehend.
It was just after noon when Wayne and his men finished photographing and collecting evidence both in the house and in the barn.
While Eva went into the bedroom to get out of her robe and nightgown and into clothes, Jake sat on the sofa to wait for her.
They still needed to clean up the kitchen where the door had been broken down, and they would need to contact somebody about a replacement door. But before any of that could happen, Jake needed some answers from her.
More than anything, he needed to know once and for all exactly what had happened ten years ago.
* * *
EVEN THOUGH EVA knew Jake was waiting for her, she took a hot shower before she got dressed. She needed to wash away the feel of David’s hands on her, the abject evil she felt had touched her.
She had already had a showdown with a killer, and she suspected she was about to have one with Jake even though she didn’t physically or mentally feel like having any more conflict for the day.
But David had opened up a whole can of worms, and she knew the time had come to pay for her past sins. When this was all over, she’d be alone, and she tried to tell herself that was what she’d wanted all along, but she couldn’t help the weight of sadness that rode her shoulders as she went back into the living room.
She eased down on the sofa next to him. Her throat still burned and hurt, and now that the adrenaline of the moment had worn off, she had aches and pains in other areas of her body from the fight for her life.
“Eva.” Jake reached out and took her hands in his, his beautiful eyes radiating pain. “I’m so sorry.”
She looked at him in surprise. “What are you sorry about?”
The pain in his eyes deepened. “It was my own brother who did all these things to you. My brother...” He shook his head.
“Jake, you aren’t responsible for your brother’s actions,” she replied softly.
He released her hands and instead raced his hands through his thick hair. “I know, but somehow I should have sensed something was off with him. I should have seen this coming.”
“How could you? Why would either one of us even consider David wanting to harm me? I didn’t even know your brother personally. This had nothing to do with you, Jake, so don’t try to take any responsibility for it.”
“Thank God I got here in time,” he said.
She raised a hand to her throat, remembering that moment when she’d been positive she was going to die. “If you’d been on
e minute longer, I would have been gone. He would have succeeded in killing me.”
He held her gaze for a long moment. “Eva, tell me what happened ten years ago. Why did you break up with me and what part did my father play in all of it?”
She’d never expected this moment to come, when she’d have to talk to him about all this. He’d just had his brother exposed as a killer, and she hated to tell him now anything about his father that would destroy Jake’s image of the man.
But it was time for truth telling. Before he left here today, he would know all her secrets, and she feared the consequences that would affect the rest of her life.
“Eva, it’s time for us to talk about the past,” he said.
“I know.” She broke eye contact with him and instead looked down at the coffee table. “The night before I broke up with you, I was in the barn feeding the horses some treats when your father showed up.”
She remembered how shocked she’d been to see Justin Albright parked in front of her home. He had been a tall, imposing man with cold, dark eyes. “I invited him inside, but he refused to come in and told me he just wanted to talk to me.”
“What did he have to say?” Jake’s voice was filled with tension, the same kind of tension that now twisted her stomach as she looked at him once again.
“He told me if I didn’t stop seeing you, then he’d destroy my father. He would see to it that he lost the ranch and wound up with nothing.” Jake’s eyes filled with a new pain.
“Jake, if he’d threatened me, I probably wouldn’t have broken up with you, but I couldn’t risk him hurting my father. I knew he had the power to do what he threatened, and I was so afraid, so the next night I broke up with you. It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life. I’m sorry, Jake.”
A new pain slashed across his features. “Don’t apologize. I think somehow in the back of my mind I always wondered if he’d been involved in your decision to not see me anymore.”
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