Anywhere She Runs

by Webb, Debra

  And he had been in the backseat. He’d forced her to drive to a remote location. He’d injected her with something that rendered her unconscious. When she’d awakened, she had been in this despicable place.

  Cherry shuddered, let the hot tears gush. At least her baby was safe now. Cherry couldn’t harm her baby now.

  She was here with poor Penny.

  They couldn’t hope to break free. Their wrists were tethered to their ankles by a length of chain, then the chain was attached to a support beam that held up the roof of the old shack.

  Cherry had tried so hard to get free, her wrists and ankles bled from the metal abrading her skin.

  Defeat sucked the last of the hope from her.

  They were going to die. He’d said so.

  Maybe they should die. Maybe they had inherited their biological father’s compulsion to murder. Daniel had ranted on and on about his wife and how she would die. Cherry had suffered the dreams of killing her own baby girl. Just maybe they all should have died thirty years ago.

  But she didn’t want to die. She wanted her life back.

  No one was going to find them. Fate had caught up to them after three decades. They would die.

  The only delay to that promised end was Adeline Cooper.

  Daniel had boasted that to their families they were already dead, but the final departure from this earth would come when all the princesses were together. Then they would march to their true destinies.

  He would take the three of them to the river and send them to heaven.

  Adeline would be here soon, he’d promised.

  Cherry closed her eyes and placed another urgent plea in the hands of her Lord. Don’t let him catch Adeline . . .

  Chapter Thirty

  Pascagoula, 7:45 A.M.

  Clay’s cell phone chirped. Since he was driving, he punched the button for speaker phone. “Yo.”

  “This has gone too far.”

  Well, if it wasn’t his favorite cop. “You should’ve thought about that before you tampered with evidence.” Clay resisted the urge to laugh. Stupid shit. Didn’t this cop understand how things worked? “Besides, it’s almost over. No need to wimp out now.”

  “This kind of shit wasn’t supposed to happen!”

  Clay rolled his eyes. The dude was seriously freaking out. “What can I say?” Clay wasn’t letting anything get in the way of his plan. It wasn’t his fault Irene Cooper had been murdered. As far as he was concerned, the old biddy had gotten what she deserved. “Life’s a bitch sometimes. You,” he warned, “just better keep your cool. You spill your guts and that little incident of evidence-tampering could make you an accessory.”

  “I didn’t tamper with evidence . . . not technically,” the nervous shit muttered. “The idiot up in Laurel was the one who tampered with evidence. Hell”—he started shouting again—“it wasn’t even evidence . . . as far as we knew then. But you knew! You knew something was going on days ago. I don’t know how, but somehow you’re responsible!”

  “Whatever.” Clay wasn’t worried about it. No one could connect him to any of this. His cop accomplice couldn’t say the same. And if this fool or the one up in Laurel dared to turn on Clay, then they would pay the consequences. “You got nothing to do with this now. I’m in control. So just back off.”

  “Her mother’s dead!” the pig practically screamed. “No one was supposed to die, you stupid little shit! No one was supposed to die.”

  Clay maneuvered his truck into the parking lot of the pancake house and slammed into park. “Chill! Goddamn! I had nothing to do with that shit. I told you that what I’m doing is just a joke. My chance to fuck with Addy’s head after what she did to my brother. Don’t blame me if you dumb fuckers can’t do your jobs and find that crazy bastard who’s going around abducting and killing people.”

  When the idiot on the other end of the line started ranting again, Clay ended the conversation with, “Stop fucking bugging me and do your job or something.”

  He severed the connection. Fucktard.

  That was the problem with people. They thought they could roll with the big boys. Ask for help, then when it came time to pay the price they turned into whining pussies.

  When would they learn the most basic principle of all: you dance, you gotta pay the fiddler?

  Clay wasn’t letting nobody take advantage of him. He was way smarter than even his older brother had been, God rest his soul. Clay wasn’t just smarter, he was more determined. He was going to get the job done.

  And then his goddamned old daddy would respect him the way he’d respected Gage.

  He hadn’t exactly lied to the dumb shit on the phone. This was a joke . . . in a roundabout way. It wasn’t Clay’s fault that things had turned deadly. He didn’t have a crystal ball and he wasn’t responsible for what other folks did. His plan was simple. There was just one last thing Clay had to do and then it would all be over as far as he was concerned. Would’ve been over already if that damned Wyatt hadn’t kept Addy stuck to him like freaking glue.

  But Clay had a plan for that, too.

  A smile cut across his face. “Bye, bye, princess.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Singing River Hospital, 9:05 A.M.

  They had moved her mother to a private room in anticipation of Adeline’s arrival. She appreciated not having to go to the morgue to do . . . this.

  Adeline’s lips quivered.

  Her mother was dead.

  “You want me to go in there with you?”

  She peered up at the man standing next to her. The sadness in his eyes tore at her already broken heart. Wyatt had always loved her mother. Had checked on her often, Irene had told Adeline so. This was hard for him, too.

  Dragging in a breath for courage, Adeline shook her head. “I need to do this in private.”

  Wyatt pulled her into his arms, held her tight to his chest. “I understand.” The softly spoken words reverberated against her temple. “I’ll be right out here if you need me.”

  “Okay.” She pulled away from his strong arms and faced the door that stood between her and her mother’s body.

  Her mother had always been there for her. No matter what happened and no matter how far Adeline had run. She had been able to count on her mother when and if she needed her.

  How could she be gone?

  Adeline reached out and opened the door. Her hand shook. She wanted to back away. To deny this awful truth. No. She would not be a coward. Her mother deserved every ounce of courage Adeline could muster. The son of a bitch who’d done this had to be stopped. Adeline wanted his ass so bad it hurt. She would make him pay.

  Stepping into the room, she closed the door behind her and leaned against it. Before attempting to move toward the bed, she took a good long look.

  Her mother looked peaceful. The sheet was folded down at her shoulders, wasn’t covering her face. Somehow she found comfort in that insignificant detail.

  Potassium chloride. The bastard had killed her mother using the same technique he’d used in Laurel on the cop. Same one he’d tried to use to kill his wife, but his wife had been pulled back from the edge.

  They hadn’t been able to pull Irene back. Maybe because of the recent heart attack . . . maybe because of her age. She hadn’t responded to the attempts to resuscitate her.

  Now she was gone.

  Adeline pushed away from the door and walked to the bed. Tears blurred her vision and she swiped them away with the back of her hand.

  “I’m sorry, Mom.” Adeline’s face crumpled with the agony flooding her. “I should have figured this out before now. I shouldn’t have been so fucking stupid.”

  She reached beneath the sheet and took her mother’s cold hand in hers. An aching sob expanded in her throat. This wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair.

  “Anyway.” Adeline cleared her throat. “He won’t get away with hurting you like this. I’ll stop him. I promise.”

  The idea that her mother might have survived this attack
if she hadn’t had that heart attack—if Adeline hadn’t stressed her out—had more of those hot tears streaming down her cheeks.

  She’d always been a bad daughter. Her parents had deserved far better.

  Adeline shouldn’t have left nine years ago. She should have told Cyrus to go fuck himself and stayed right here with her mother.

  Selfish. That was what Adeline had been. She’d been a selfish, indifferent daughter and now her mother was dead because of her.

  I will get you, you motherfucker. Wherever Daniel Jamison went, whatever he did . . . Adeline would find and stop him.

  Leaning down, she kissed her mother’s forehead. “I love you.” She bit back more of the tears, steadied her voice. “No one else could have been a better mother. I will always be your little girl. Yours and daddy’s.”

  She fingered the edge of the sheet, told herself to go ahead and cover her mother’s face. It was time. There was nothing more Adeline could do here. Nothing else to say.

  Getting the bastard who’d done this was all that mattered now.

  Raised voices outside the room drew Adeline’s attention to the door. Hope pushed aside some of the pain in her chest. Maybe they’d found that son of a bitch. She stormed across the room and jerked the door open.

  Wyatt stood between the door and Cyrus.

  Adeline looked past Wyatt, the agony inside her instantly morphing into white-hot fury. “What do you want?” Wyatt stepped fully aside, allowing Cyrus to feel the full brunt of her glare.

  Cyrus hiked up his chin and glared right back at her. “I want to see her.”

  “I told him to leave,” Wyatt explained. “I can call security.”

  Unable to shift her gaze from Cyrus’s, she could have sworn that for a single moment she’d seen misery in those beady brown eyes. Whatever she’d thought she saw, it cleared in one blink and was immediately replaced by the condescension she’d always associated with the man.

  “Addy,” Cyrus said sternly, though his voice trembled ever so slightly, “I have the right to see her. Call security if you’d like, but I will not leave without seeing her.”

  His man Everett hovered a few feet away. Adeline braced for war. No way was she letting this old bastard anywhere near her mother.

  She opened her mouth to say as much but swallowed back the words. Her mother wouldn’t approve of her acting this way. Cyrus Cooper, bastard though he was, was still family.

  “All right.” Adeline backed into the room, opened the door wider to facilitate the wheelchair’s entrance. When Wyatt sent her a questioning look she just shook her head. This was something she couldn’t exactly explain.

  Adeline closed the door and moved to the side of the bed opposite Cyrus’s position. He stared at Irene for a long moment then redirected his attention to Adeline. “Are they any closer to finding the animal who did this?”

  A moment was required for her to set aside the years of animosity she’d felt for this man. She was doing this for her mother. “Yes,” she finally said. “We know who he is now. We’ll get him.” Her attention settled on her mother once more. “Soon. I won’t stop until I find him.”

  “When you find him,” Cyrus said, drawing her contemplation back to him, “I want you to kill him.”

  There was something in his eyes. An agony that nearly matched Adeline’s. He was dead serious. “I’m . . .” She swallowed with difficulty, her emotions vacillating between disgust and empathy. “I’m a cop, old man. Not an assassin.” She resisted the urge to reassure him about her objective. She had every intention of killing the bastard. In the line of duty, of course.

  “Not just one shot,” Cyrus cautioned, as if she hadn’t spoken at all. “Keep shooting until there’s no question that he’s dead.”

  Bewildered by the strange tension vibrating between them, Adeline dragged her focus away from Cyrus and back to her mother. She smoothed her hand over her hair. She wasn’t giving the old bastard the satisfaction of seeing in her eyes that she would like nothing better than the opportunity to carry out his suggestion. That was wrong. It wasn’t a suggestion, it was an order. The kind he’d been giving his whole life. The same kind that people around here had been jumping through hoops to follow.

  “She loved you more than anything in this world,” he said quietly.

  Adeline didn’t need him to tell her that. “But she stayed here when I begged her to join me in Huntsville.” She knew damned well her mother had loved her despite the frustrating decision. Mainly Adeline just wanted to defy anything he said.

  Cyrus didn’t speak again for a while, just stared at Irene as if by sheer force of will he could change this reality. Even Cooper law couldn’t resurrect the dead.

  “That was my doing.”

  More of the disgust she always felt in his presence settled in Adeline’s stomach. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a long story,” Cyrus said, his voice weak, distant. “And complicated. You wouldn’t understand.”

  What the hell? Adeline had tolerated about as many secrets as any one person could be expected to stomach. It was past time for the whole truth. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Cyrus met her glare with an uncharacteristic softness. “Your mother and father dated for two years before they married.”

  “I knew that.” Adeline had no idea what he was getting at. She was tired. The pain had settled into a dull ache. She had no patience for listening to a pointless story. Particularly from this man. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Your father and I . . .” The old bastard sighed. “We sort of competed for Irene’s affections. We both loved her.”

  Oh, yeah, right. “My mother would never love you,” she countered, allowing him to feel every ounce of disdain his claim elicited. No way was she going to listen to this kind of crap. She shouldn’t have let him in here. The ache in her chest protested with another harsh wave of pain. She’d done this for her mother . . . arguing with him was wrong under the circumstances. Just hear him out. She gave him her attention once more. “Why would you say that?”

  Incredibly, Cyrus nodded as if he agreed with her assertion. “I longed for her to, but she loved your father. And I wasn’t about to try and take that from him. He’d suffered so much his entire life. I just wanted him to be happy.”

  The polio. Adeline blinked, remembering. Her father had suffered with polio as a child. He’d been a fine, strong man when Adeline was growing up but his childhood and teen years had been very different. She remembered hearing her mother say that Cyrus had always looked out for his little brother, especially while they were growing up. Adeline had never known that side of her uncle. Didn’t really believe it existed even now.

  “I accepted your mother’s decision, but I . . .” Cyrus’s gaze rested on Irene then. “I never stopped loving her.”

  Shock rolled through Adeline. Jesus Christ. She’d had no idea. Something else her mother had never told her. Adeline couldn’t imagine the old bastard really loving anyone, except his own evil spawn. But now that she thought about it, she’d never seen Cyrus look at his own wife the way he had Irene.

  “My God,” Adeline muttered. How could she have missed so much? Had she been that self-centered? Maybe she just hadn’t wanted to see.

  “Shortly after your father and mother married, Irene discovered she was expecting their first child.”

  The news rocked Adeline back on her heels all over again. She needed body armor here; the bullets just kept coming. “I thought—”

  “Irene lost that child.” Cyrus’s tone had turned dull and listless. “She was about four months along and your father was away on business. She had an appointment with the obstetrician and I offered to take her. I was driving too fast the way I always did and there was an accident. Your mother wasn’t visibly injured. She seemed fine.”

  Her mother had told Adeline that Cyrus had been in an accident and that was the reason he’d ended up on crutches and then in a wheelchair. Only Irene had left
out the part about being in the car with him.

  “You said,” Adeline prodded, “that Mother wasn’t visibly injured. What happened to the baby?” She hadn’t heard anything about a miscarriage, either. As far as Adeline had known, she’d been the one and only child. The one and only pregnancy. Of course that had proven wrong.

  Just another indication of how little she knew about her parents.

  “You know they didn’t have the tests back then that they have now,” Cyrus explained. “At least not around here. There was damage that they didn’t catch. Later that night she had to be rushed to the hospital, right here in Singing River. By then the internal hemorrhaging was so severe, it’s a miracle she survived at all. She was airlifted to Hattiesburg for emergency surgery. The only way to save her life at that point was a total hysterectomy.”

  “Oh my God.” The revelations just kept coming. Adeline stared at the sweet face that hid so much pain. Why hadn’t her mother ever told Adeline any of this?

  I didn’t want you to know that you weren’t my little girl.

  More of that misery twisted Adeline’s insides.

  The door opened and Wyatt stuck his head into the room. “Everything okay in here?”

  Adeline wanted to run into his strong arms. To feel his heart beating against her breast. But right now she had to do the right thing . . . she had to hear her mother’s story. “Give us a minute more.”

  Wyatt held her gaze a moment then drew back, pulling the door closed once more.

  When she settled her attention on Cyrus once more, he continued. “Both your mother and father were devastated.” That same monotone that sounded nothing at all like the old bastard she knew echoed softly in the room. “I took full responsibility.” His shoulders sagged wearily. “It was my fault. Your mother couldn’t deal with any of it. She wouldn’t even talk about it. She left the hospital with your great-aunt Joan. Went straight to Cincinnati. Your father couldn’t talk her into coming home. He’d lost his child and, from every appearance, was about to lose his wife. He tried not to hold it against me, but I saw it in his eyes. He wanted to hate me . . . but he couldn’t.”