He’d told her not to eat dinner, that he would bring Chang Li’s for them to eat when he arrived. With that in mind, she’d brought plates and silverware into the bedroom and thought about how crazy it was to eat on her aunt’s bed on an ancient pink bedspread with a man she was intensely drawn to while hiding out from a killer.
Definitely the world was topsy-turvy, yet when she thought about how much she wanted her life back, she’d begun to think she didn’t want the same life she’d lived in the past year. For the first time since leaving Pittsburgh and returning to Wolf Creek, she wanted something different. She wanted more.
She wasn’t sure yet what more meant, but she was thinking maybe doing a little catering business might be the answer until she could eventually make enough money to perhaps consider that bakery she’d always dreamed about.
Nerves jumped in her stomach as she heard the faint sound of the garage door opening and, a moment later, closing. Finally, Frank had arrived.
She stood by the side of the neatly made bed and saw the faint shine of the flashlight he carried, along with a large bag from Chang Li’s, as he came down the hallway toward her. “Finally, a human face and he carries food,” she said softly.
“I’m not even going to ask you what makes you happier, the face or the food,” he replied with a teasing tone.
He entered the bedroom and closed the door behind him. Only then did he turn off his flashlight, and in the glow from the nightstand lamp she could see his handsome features and the smile that curved his lips.
Her heart stepped up in rhythm as he placed the bag on the bed and gazed at her. “Hermit life agrees with you,” he said. “You look pretty in pink.”
“Thanks,” she replied. The T-shirt advertised the Roadside Stop. “And you wear a white shirt and a gun very well. And now, enough about us—let’s eat. I’m starving.”
“I knew it was the food that put the smile on your face,” he replied as he opened the bag and she prepared the plates and forks and spoons. “What’s with the pink bedspread?” he asked. “I noticed you had one in your apartment, too.”
She felt almost giddy as he took off his holster and placed it on the nightstand next to him and they finally settled side by side on the bed. She wasn’t sure if it was because finally she had somebody to see, somebody to talk to face-to-face, or if it was because it was specifically Frank.
“I pulled this off the bed where I slept here as a child. It always represented safety and security and love. When I got back from Pittsburgh, the first thing I did was buy a pink bedspread for my apartment.”
Despite the spicy scents that emanated from the plate, she was acutely aware of the woodsy fragrance of Frank’s now-familiar cologne.
“So, you have a bedspread and me to make you feel safe and secure,” he replied, his eyes warm in the glow of the small lamp.
“At least for now,” she replied.
They ate for a few minutes in silence. “Did your aunt allow you to eat in bed when you were little?” he asked when his food was half-eaten.
“Heavens, no. We were never allowed to eat food anywhere but at the kitchen table. Though I think she’d make an exception under the circumstances.” She hesitated a moment, her mind filled with visions of her aunt. “I guess the search team has still come up empty.”
“It’s a slow process for them,” he replied. “They’re virtually beating new paths through the brush and woods to make sure they find every shed, every structure that might possibly give them some answers as to your aunt’s whereabouts.”
“It’s going to take them months to clear all of the cabins and sheds or whatever.” She used her fork to spear a piece of pineapple from the sweet-and-sour chicken on her plate. “At least it’s a comfort to know that something is being done to continue to try to get answers.” She popped the pineapple in her mouth.
“We won’t stop looking for answers,” he replied. “As Jimmy just reminded me today, failure isn’t an option. We’re going to find out what happened to your aunt and get whoever is after you.”
“What about Agnes Wilson? Have you all found any more leads by comparing her case to Aunt Liz’s?” Marlene hadn’t known the sixty-four-year-old woman who had disappeared two years before, but she certainly knew what her family had gone through...was still probably experiencing.
“Nothing specific.” Frank’s blue eyes held less of a bright glow than they had moments before.
“So, Agnes is a cold case and Aunt Liz is becoming one.”
“I wish I could give you more, but right now we’re just working day by day to find answers. How are you doing? Mentally this has got to be tough on you, being holed up here for the past five days.”
She took another bite of her chicken and then placed her plate on the nightstand next to her. “I have to admit, it’s been kind of eye-opening for me. For the last year I’ve told myself that I liked being alone, that it was what I wanted, what I deserved.”
“What you deserved? Why would you think that?” He finished the last of his food and put his plate on the nightstand on the opposite side of the bed. When he turned back to look at her, his gaze held a knowing glint. “Does this have something to do with the abuse you suffered in your marriage?”
She hesitated and then nodded. “I didn’t tell you everything.” Old negative emotions surged up inside her. The old refrain that it had all been her fault combined with the familiar guilt and grief, but she fought against it all. “I didn’t tell you what happened right before I left Matt.”
Frank plumped the pillow behind him and sat up straighter. “Then tell me now.”
She’d had five long days and nights alone to go back in time, to process all the choices she had made, everything that had happened in her marriage. She’d thought she was ready to tell somebody else of the burden she carried so heavily in her heart, but now she found herself reluctant to speak of those last final moments with Matt.
He reached out and enveloped one of her hands in his. “Talk to me, Marlene. It’s obvious you need to talk about something.”
She nodded and squeezed his hand. If she was ready to tell anyone about those final moments of her marriage, it was Frank, who had proved himself to be compassionate and kind.
“By the time I’d been married to Matt a little over a year, I knew that I had to get away from him, that eventually something terrible was going to happen to me. But each time I started to make a plan or even think about just walking out the door, he’d do something wonderful, show me a glimpse of how things could be...should be.”
“A honeymoon phase,” Frank replied. “That’s common in domestic-abuse situations.”
“I know that now. When I was in the middle of it, all I knew was that when things were going well, Matt was loving to me and lavish with praise and gifts, and each time a seed of hope would spring to life inside of me.”
She squeezed his hand once again. “I was such a stupid fool.”
“You’ve got to stop thinking that way. Smart women get trapped with bad men. You were a young woman away from home with no support from family or friends,” Frank countered.
“That’s the other thing.... I didn’t want to show up back here on Aunt Liz’s doorstep, broke financially, broken physically and mentally. I didn’t want to be a failure, so I continued to stay, and eventually I got pregnant.”
She swallowed against a sob that threatened to escape, and this time his hand tightened around hers. “Matt was thrilled, certain that I was going to have a boy, and for the next five months life with him was fairly wonderful. But I knew that I was married to a monster, and I knew it was just a matter of time before the monster raised his head again. Every day I contemplated leaving, but I didn’t.”
“And then the honeymoon ended.” Frank’s voice was flat, his eyes shimmering with both compassion and rage on her behalf.
Frank scooted closer to her and pulled her against him, one arm around her shoulders as she continued. “Matt came down the stairs and walked right past me. He told me that if I called 911 I’d better make sure I told them I fell after he had left the house, and then he walked out the front door and went to work.”
Her heart tightened with unimaginable pain as she remembered finally crawling to the phone and calling for help. Later that day Matt had arrived at the hospital with a big bouquet of flowers, and he had expressed his sorrow over the loss of their child with a warning glint in his eyes directed solely at her.
“I should hunt him down and kill him,” Frank said, his voice filled with a seething anger.
“I should have left him sooner. If I had, my baby girl wouldn’t have died.” Tears blurred her vision. “I was a coconspirator in my baby’s death.”
“That’s not true,” Frank exclaimed fervently. “There was only one person responsible and that was Matt, and if I find out he’s behind the attempt on your life, then I’ll make sure he spends many years behind bars.”
Marlene released a tremulous sigh. “The last five days and nights have been good for me. For the last year I’ve been running from my past, refusing to process everything that happened, blaming myself whenever any memories intruded. But during this time alone, here in the place where I’ve always felt safe, I’ve started to allow myself to think about what happened, and finally begin to mourn for my little baby and to forgive myself.”
Frank tightened his arm around her and she welcomed the warmth of his closeness, the fact that as she looked into his eyes she saw no judgment.
“You don’t have to forgive yourself, Marlene. You suffered a terrible loss at the hands of a terrible man.”
“Logically I know that. Emotionally I can’t help but wish I could go back in time and change the choices I made, choices that might have saved my baby.”
She released another sigh and realized that there was a relief in no longer keeping this a secret, that talking about it had released some of her pain.
“I was going to name her Angela. She was my sweet baby angel and I let her down.”
“Marlene, guilt is a terrible thing to carry. In those couple of days after I killed Steve’s old girlfriend to save your sister’s life and believed that I had destroyed any hope Steve had of getting back his son, I thought of all the things I would have done differently in that single moment in time.”
“If you had hesitated at all or done anything differently, Roxy would have been stabbed to death by Stacy.” It had been only a few weeks ago that Roxy had been terrorized by Steve Kincaid’s girlfriend, who had disappeared with his son two years ago.
Stacy had cornered Roxy on the second floor of the home where Roxy both lived and had her restaurant, and had tried to stab her to death with the crazy idea that if Roxy was out of Steve’s life, Stacy could walk back into it.
When Frank killed Stacy, there was no way for any of them to know where she’d been staying or where Steve’s little boy, Tommy, might be. It was only when a man called Chopper, who was later identified by his real name as thirty-four-year-old Chad Pope, came into the police station with Tommy in tow that Steve was finally reunited with his son.
“I think everyone has a moment in time when they wish they’d made a different decision, when they wonder what life would look like had another path been chosen,” Frank said softly.
Marlene curled into the warmth of his broad chest. “When this is all over and I finally have my life back, I’m going to make different decisions than I have in the past year.”
“Like what?” Frank stroked her hair, his caress both soothing and stirring her heartbeat to a quickened pace at the same time.
“First I’m going to get some therapy to finish the healing process I’m already beginning. Then I’m thinking maybe I’ll start a catering business while I’m still working at the store, and when I can get together the money, I might actually open up the bakery shop on Main Street that I’ve always dreamed about.”
“It’s good to shoot for your dreams.” His hand had moved to her shoulder, gently stroking the material and heating the skin beneath.
“What dreams do you have, Frank?” she asked. She knew she should move away from him, that the intimacy of the dimly lit room, the two of them in the middle of the bed, wasn’t such a good idea.
“I don’t have any dreams. I do my job to the best of my ability and then go home. I don’t want to be anything except what I am now. I like the predictability of knowing who and what I am. I’m not inclined to change my life in any meaningful way because of some fanciful dream.”
Once again he pulled her closer. “But your dream of owning your own bakery—that’s not just a meaningless fantasy. That’s a potential reality, and I hope you go for it.”
His words warmed her and filled her with the confirmation of possibilities, and she raised her head, wanting...no, needing him to kiss her.
He readily complied, first brushing his lips against hers and then applying welcome pressure and heat. She molded herself more tightly against him as the kiss continued, firing a desire in her for more.
It wasn’t just a physical want that filled her veins; it was also the fact that she had shared her horrible secrets with him and in doing so had taken another step toward healing and toward a new intimacy with him.
He was the only person on the face of the earth who truly knew her as the woman who had survived Matt McGraw and was just beginning to heal from the experience.
He was the one person in town who had apparently seen something in her that was worthwhile, that was worth pursuing. He’d seen beneath her ice-princess facade when nobody else had bothered to look.
Still, no matter how much she wanted to encourage his kisses and caresses, she also couldn’t forget that this was her aunt Liz’s bed and it would just feel wrong to allow their desire for each other to play out here.
She was just about to break the kiss when the bedroom door flew open and a dark shadow appeared in the doorway. “I’ll shoot anything that moves in this room.”
* * *
Frank’s heart crashed against his ribs as he froze, afraid to grab for his own gun on the nearby nightstand or make a single move until he knew who and what presented the danger.
He tightened his arm around Marlene, instantly trying to decide if he could roll her behind him without the two of them getting shot.
“Treetie, it’s me. For goodness’ sake, put the gun down,” Marlene said urgently.
“Marlene?” The woman in the doorway turned on the overhead light and gasped. “Marlene Marie, what are you doing in your aunt’s bed with a man?”
Frank remained tense despite the fact that the short, petite gray-haired woman had lowered the gun. “I think the real question is, why are you in Liz Marcoli’s bedroom with a gun in your hand?”
“Why don’t we all go into the living room,” Marlene said as she slid off the bed.
A few moments later Frank and Marlene sat on the sofa in the living room and Patricia Burns, “Please call me Treetie,” faced them from a nearby chair.
“Treetie is Aunt Liz’s best friend,” Marlene explained to Frank, and he remembered that the woman had been questioned by Steve initially when Liz had disappeared. It had been Treetie who had given them the information about Liz seeing Edward Cardell secretly and romantically.
“I’ve been keeping an eye o
n things here,” Treetie replied. “Earlier this morning I thought I saw somebody moving around inside the house. I thought maybe it was whoever had taken Liz.”
“And you didn’t call the police?” Frank asked, his heart only now finally finding a more normal rhythm.
“I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t want to make a report and have the police come out here and find nothing. It would make me look like a foolish old woman.”
Frank didn’t mention how foolish it had been to enter a dark house with a gun to confront whoever might be inside.
“I was on my way home from a late dinner out when I decided to check out the house,” Treetie continued. “I have a key, so I let myself in the front door and heard your voices coming from the bedroom. Now, I’d like to know why you two were in Liz’s bedroom.” She stared at Frank with a look that let him know she was a tough one who probably took no guff from anyone.
“I’ve been hiding out here for the last five days,” Marlene said. “We didn’t want anyone to know I was here. Frank came by to bring me dinner and to catch me up on the investigation.”
“I heard about the shooting last Friday night,” Treetie replied. “I figured you’d holed up with either Roxy or Sheri.” Her brown eyes remained on Marlene. “It would be nice if you’d make contact with Edward.” Her cheeks reddened with a faint blush. “He’s been positively lost without your aunt. It would be nice if you girls would at least acknowledge him and the relationship he had with your aunt.”
“I don’t know for sure that he isn’t responsible for Aunt Liz’s disappearance,” Marlene replied with a hint of coolness in her tone. “Right now I have enough problems of my own. I’m not in a position to want to soothe anyone else’s feelings.”
Treetie’s chin raised and her small eyes gleamed too brightly. “Edward is a good and kind man. He would never do anything to harm Liz or any of you girls. Liz was lucky to have him in her life. The poor man has been broken since her disappearance.”
Frank had the feeling that Treetie didn’t mind being the woman to console, to put back together, the “broken” man. “Is that who you were dining with this evening?” he asked.
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