by Lisa Childs
Her dark eyes blinked open, her stare disturbingly unfocused.
“Please, God!” He shuddered. Then he sealed her nose and puffed a few more breaths into her mouth.
Her arms circled his shoulders, and her lips moved under his. “Umm,” she moaned. Then she gasped for a breath.
“Lindsey,” Dylan murmured as he ran his fingers over her precious face and into her hair. “Lindsey.”
She coughed. “We have to…get out of here. Trap. She’s here…with a gun. dangerous. Marge…”
Although her voice was no louder than a rasp, he caught her panicked words. “I know it was Marge. It was, Lindsey.”
“The shot… You shot her?”
He shook his head. “No, I didn’t shoot her.”
“Then Jones—”
“Is taking a long nap tonight. No, it wasn’t Jones. Marge.”
“She…” Lindsey shuddered in his arms. “She shot herself.”
Running foot steps on the asphalt path echoed around the oak tree. A voice rang out from the darkness. “I think I see them!”
“Over here,” Dylan called out.
Evan Quade and Will Warner halted abruptly next to Dylan and Lindsey. Will dropped to his knees. “Sweetheart, you’re all right?”
Lindsey nodded. “I’m fine, Dad. Marge—”
“I’m so sorry, honey.” He ran his hands over her face. “I should have known. I should have seen—”
“Nobody did,” Dylan interrupted, and put a hand on Will’s shoulder.
The older man shuddered, and a sob bubbled out of him. “But—”
“No buts, Dad,” Lindsey rasped, and struggled to her knees. She threw her arms around her father.
Evan Quade choked out a breath. “Damn, Dylan, you’re fast. I lost you by the diner. Then Will stopped me. We couldn’t figure out where you went.”
Dylan turned to him. “It was a guess.”
“A good guess. Oh, my God!” Evan staggered back a couple of steps. He gestured toward the tree. “She hung you, Lindsey? We have to get you to a hospital. How long—how can you be alive?”
“I wondered that, too,” Dylan admitted. “Marge toyed with me a long time before she…”
“Took you…long enough,” Lindsey griped in a whisper. “Held the branch…lost my grip…”
Lindsey wilted in her father’s arms, her head lolling against his shoulder, the noose still around her neck.
Evan called for an ambulance on his cell phone. And Dylan took her from her father’s arms. “She’s breathing. She’s just fainted.”
“That’s going to tick her off,” Evan said.
“I’ll carry her to the street….” Before he turned for the asphalt path, Dylan glanced up at the ancient oak where the frayed piece of rope still hung. Where Lindsey had hung… Because of him.
“SO YOU’RE HERE in an official capacity,” Lindsey said a couple of hours later from the gurney in the hospital emergency room. Despite being groggy from the painkiller they’d given her, she spotted the notepad in his hand and the detached expression on his face.
This was not the same man who’d held her in his arms in the cemetery. This was not her lover. This was Deputy Dylan Matthews.
“I need to get all the facts, so I can complete the report.” His blue gaze never touched on her face, wouldn’t meet her eyes. Lindsey yawned.
“Can’t this wait till morning?” Evan asked from behind Dylan. He held out a coffee cup to Lindsey.
She smiled and grasped the foam cup in both trembling, bandaged hands.
“Is caffeine really a good idea right now?” Dylan asked.
Lindsey smiled again. Perhaps he cared a little bit. “If you intend to interrogate me, it is.”
“I don’t intend to interrogate you,” Dylan grumbled. “I just have a few questions. I want to know what Marge said to you.”
Because of the bandages and painkillers, she couldn’t feel a thing physically. Emotionally she felt too much. “I had some questions to ask her. She insisted I have a cup of coffee and a cinnamon roll while she answered them.”
“Ever the reporter,” Dylan commented. “What kind of questions?”
“I wanted to know why she tried to kill my mother.”
“What?” His blue eyes widened.
“Yeah, chalk another one up to her. Marge started the fire that scarred my mother. She was with Mom before the fire started. My mother told me that tonight. Before I went to see her, I checked through some copies of Arborview records.”
Dylan glared at her brother. “Wonder where she got her hands on those.”
Evan laughed and sipped at his own cup of coffee.
“So you figured it out?” Dylan asked her.
“Of course,” Lindsey scoffed.
“So you know Steve Mars was your brother?”
“What!” She nearly dropped her cup. Dylan took it from her nerve less fingers. “What are you talking about?”
“I guess Marge didn’t answer many of your questions.”
“No.” Lindsey shivered. “No, she was too busy trying to poison me. I have a brother. He’s right there.”
Dylan didn’t glance at Evan now. “Your father and Marge were high school sweet hearts. She was pregnant when he left for college. She didn’t want to derail his dreams. She went to Arborview before he went away. That’s where she met your mother the first time. The second time was when Retha came here as your father’s bride.”
“So that’s why she tried to kill my mother.”
“And not just the fire,” Dylan said. “I believe she was giving your mother drugs during her visits to her. Probably put them in the food she brought her. She wanted your mother incapacitated.”
“Because she wanted my father.”
“And your father was too stupid to see it,” Will Warner said from the doorway. He leaned wearily against the jamb. “So Steve Mars was my son?”
Dylan nodded. “So Marge claimed.”
“We were close.” Will sighed. “If I hadn’t met Retha while I was at college, I may have come home to marry Marge. But I fell for your mother, Lindsey. Even after she got sick, I never stopped loving her. I believed Marge and I were just…”
“She believed more,” Dylan said. “Then Steve killed Jimmy for getting Sarah pregnant. He didn’t intend to help her. He laughed when Steve asked his intentions regarding her pregnancy. Later Steve killed himself in the holding cell. He wrote me a letter during the sentencing.”
Lindsey said, “I’d like to see it, Dylan.”
He shook his head. “I need it for evidence.”
She wanted to argue with him, but her head ached.
“And?” Evan prompted.
“And Marge believed all these years that I killed Steve. I don’t think she ever accepted he killed Jimmy. She blamed the sheriff, Chet Oliver and the mayor, who was then the judge, for her son’s pleading guilty. She didn’t know for sure that Steve was hers until she stole the records from Chet’s office. Then she waited until I came home to start exacting her revenge.”
Lindsey’s heart ached, and she reached for his hand. “It’s not your fault, Dylan.”
Dylan twisted his lips, but the expression in no way resembled a smile. His eyes narrowed on her bandaged hands. “How did she get you to the cemetery?”
Lindsey fought a sigh. “She acted fast. She thought I was going to fall asleep like Jones had in his police car. She told me she was dumping garbage, but she must have brought him a roll. With him following me I thought I was safe. Is he all right?”
Dylan nodded. “He didn’t stuff the cinnamon roll in his backpack like you did.”
“Or dump coffee in a flowerpot, either, I bet,” Lindsey added.
“So she took you out the back door?”
“Yup. She had a gun stuck in my back. She pushed me all the way to the cemetery. I figured she’d try to shoot me there, and I intended to wait for my moment to fight. But she never dropped that gun. She made me slip the noose around my neck.” S
he lifted her fingertips to the sore skin at her throat.
She glanced up to see Dylan’s gaze focused intently on her neck. His handsome face was grim.
“I’m all right,” she insisted to all the worried men in the room.
She continued, “She made me climb the tree, but not far. I figured out why later. She told me to tie the other end of the rope around the branch. Then she tried to convince me how painless hanging would be. She was lying.”
She took a sip of the bitter coffee and grimaced. “Anyhow, she said I’d just fall asleep and fall off the tree branch. Of course, she didn’t know that I wasn’t drugged. I figured on waiting till she left, then untying the rope and climbing down. But she jumped up and caught my leg and dragged me down. I still had my hold on the branch. I hung on for a long time.” She held up her hands. Bandages covered the raw skin. Blood penetrated the gauze. Apparently the pain killer had been a good idea.
“And while you hung from that tree, she toyed with me in the diner. Then when I looked for you in the back room, she shot herself.”
Lindsey guessed he blamed himself for that, too. She suspected that Marge’s final revenge was for Dylan to live with the guilt of all those deaths. Lindsey’s, too. “None of this was your fault, Dylan. She must have seen that at the end. Had she read the letter from Steve?”
“She thought I forced him to write it.”
“She tried to convince herself of that, but I’m sure she knew the truth. That’s why she shot herself instead of you.” She reached for his hand again, but he took a step back, nearly bumping into Evan’s coffee cup.
Will Warner settled into a chair on the other side of Lindsey’s bed. “So she killed Chet and the mayor?”
Dylan nodded. “Yeah, she drugged them with rolls. She didn’t wait long enough before she shot Chet, though, and he struggled. A bullet went into the ceiling. I found the guard from Arborview. He confirmed she got Retha out, probably hoping to frame her. She was more successful drugging the mayor. Then she staged the gas leak.”
“And the fire? It was her.”
Dylan nodded. “It was all her. She drugged the sheriff, too, knowing he couldn’t mix other drugs with his heart meds without bringing on an attack. Tried it again tonight. The rolls she sent with you, Will.”
Will rubbed a hand over his face. “I nearly ate one. But I brought them here, and your guard at the sheriff’s door took them right to the lab.”
“I had her then, so I went to the diner. I think she tried to drug me, too. But it’s over now.” Dylan closed his book and tucked his pen into the wire spiral holding the papers together.
Lindsey suspected he was referring to more than the murder case. When his deep blue eyes settled on her face, she read the regret in them. It was over now.
Chapter Sixteen
DYLAN HAD AVOIDED the cemetery in Winter Falls until that day he and Lindsey had been shot at near the gate. Even after he’d entered it, he’d never ventured where he was now. His family plot.
He stood over the graves of his parents and his brother. This was his legacy. Death. This was all he had to offer. Two nights ago, Lindsey had nearly died because of him. Because Marge had known he loved her.
He glanced over his shoulder at the ancient oak near Steve Mars’s grave. Then he rubbed a hand over his face. If he closed his eyes, he could see her swinging from that tree. For two nights, he’d avoided sleep because of the night mares that plagued him.
What if he’d not found her in time? What if she’d died? A surge of dread poured through his heart, causing it to ache even more. He ached for her. He ached for her upbeat attitude, for her sassy mouth, for her loving arms….
He hadn’t seen her since that night at the hospital. But she must have come around the police station. This morning an article printed in the Gazette referred to Steve’s suicide note. Lindsey’s headline had pro claimed Rumors Laid to Rest. Officially he was cleared of Steve’s death.
He owed her for that. Although there were still some people who couldn’t look him in the eye, he could stay in Winter Falls.
He knelt and leaned over the graves to pluck a petal from the roses near his mother’s tomb stone. The sheriff. He still loved her even though she was gone.
When Lindsey left, he’d still love her, too. He accepted that and accepted that he couldn’t ask her to stay. He had nothing to offer her. His legacy was here.
The petal of the red rose was as silky as Lindsey’s skin. He lifted it to his nose. And as fragrant. “Dylan.”
He surged to his feet and turned to her, as if thinking of her had conjured her up. “Lindsey.”
“Come here often?” she asked with a soft reverence for the dead.
“No. First time, actually. Cowardly of me,” he scoffed. “But that’s what someone once called me, a coward. I think it fits.”
Lindsey chuckled. “Well, admitting it is the first step.”
“Accepting it. It’s all there is. I’m taking no more steps from here.” He sighed. “So did you come here to say goodbye?”
“Goodbye?” Her smile slipped.
“Yeah, you have a job waiting in Chicago. Some gloating, too.”
Lindsey shrugged and rubbed her bandaged hands over the sleeves of her turtleneck sweater. “I don’t think I ever intended to go back. I already have a job.”
“I saw the paper this morning.”
She smiled again. “You mad?”
“You bullied Jones into letting you look at that letter.” He pushed a hand through his hair and barely stopped himself from reaching for her. “That letter wasn’t for the public.”
“It needed to be done.”
“Rumors laid to rest,” he murmured. “I suppose you expect me to thank you.”
Lindsey sighed. “I know better than to expect anything from you, Dylan. Wasn’t that our deal?”
He couldn’t speak now of his deal with her. He’d broken the rules. He’d fallen in love with her.
“But to answer your question, I don’t expect your gratitude. I did it to thank you.” Her dark eyes filled with emotions. He only allowed himself to see the gratitude.
He raised a brow in confusion. “Why? For what?”
She smiled. “You saved my life. Again. You saved my life again and again. Really, I think Marge had it in for me more than anyone else.”
He shook his head. “No. It was me. She used you to get to me.”
“I figured I was the bait the other night. She was using me to trap you here.” She shivered.
Dylan’s arms ached to wrap around her, to hold her close and protect her from the painful memories of that night. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps he needed to make the next step. He’d already admitted he was a coward. Now was the time to be brave. “I don’t think she ever intended to kill me.”
“You said you thought she’d poisoned you.”
“No poison. Sedatives. She had a prescription from Arborview. She was an outpatient there. She used them to drug every body. Of course, the sedatives were not compatible with Sheriff Buck’s high blood pressure pills. That’s what caused his heart attack the night he hit the tree. Marge knew that.”
“So Marge was getting psychiatric help?” Lindsey chuckled with a bitter edge. “Guess it didn’t help.”
The question dawned in her dark eyes. Her reporter’s brain had kicked in. “But if she didn’t intend to kill you, why kill me?”
Dylan took a quick breath. “Her revenge.”
“But how?”
He glanced back at his parents’ graves. At Jimmy’s. Was it fair? Should he burden her with his legacy? “This is what happens to people I care about.” He gestured at the manicured ground.
Lindsey stepped closer. He could feel her heat, feel the brush of her fuzzy sweater against the hair on his forearm. “Their deaths had nothing to do with you.”
He shook his head. “I should have tried to stop my dad from driving that night. Mom would be alive.”
“You wouldn’t have been able to sto
p him. You were just a child. Your mother shouldn’t have gotten in the car with him. She shouldn’t have let you in that car.”
“You’re saying it was her fault?”
“No, but it was more hers than yours. And it was your father’s for driving drunk. It wasn’t yours.”
He smiled sadly over her vehemence. “He knew that. That’s why he drank himself to death.”
“He was sick.”
“He was weak and cowardly.” He barked out a bitter laugh. “Who’s to say I wouldn’t have done the same thing if I’d been too late the other night? If you’d died because of me…”
Despite her bandages, Lindsey grabbed his shoulders and turned him around. “I’m to say you wouldn’t have, Dylan. I may have teased you about being a coward. But you’re not. You’re the bravest man I know. You would never be so weak.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, you’re right. I’d deserve to suffer the rest of my life, as Marge had intended.”
“And Jimmy’s death. You had nothing to do with that.”
“I should have known what kind of man he was. I should have known about Sarah. I should have stopped him.”
“Steve was his best friend, and he didn’t know. But he stopped him. It was too late, though, and it was wrong. Jimmy didn’t deserve to die. Neither did Steve.”
Lindsey dropped her hands. “I still can’t believe he was my brother. From an only child to having two brothers…”
Dylan touched her cheek, ran one finger over the satiny skin. “Are you okay with that?”
She sighed. “I wish I’d known all my life, but I can handle it.”
He smiled. “You can handle anything. I’ve never met a woman like you. You’re so strong, so secure.”
She laughed. “You are crazy, Dylan Matthews, if you believe that. I’m the coward.”
He shook his head. “You’re not. In every dangerous situation, you used your head.”
“And nearly lost it. You saved me every time. But you’re avoiding my question. I’m a reporter, Deputy. You can’t side track me.”
“I can’t?” he challenged. He slid his finger from her cheek to the curve of her ear and slipped his fingers into the tangle of her glossy curls. He stroked his thumb back and forth over her full lower lip.