He unclipped his cell phone again. I’d better text Clay. Brett knew if he called his partner, he would make him wait for backup, but he couldn’t. Not now. Clay would be there soon anyway, especially since he knew about Samuel’s body.
Brett’s vision cleared enough for him to punch out a message. I’m at Sarah’s. Found the whacker’s tools. On my way to her brother’s house on the property.
After tucking his phone away, he raced to the barn’s entrance, then stepped outside, looking left then right. Turning to his right with his back hugging the wooded barn’s siding, he waited until his eyes adjusted to the darkness. The moon hid behind the clouds. He holstered his gun, reached around to the other side of his belt, and unclipped a flashlight. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do. He shone his light to the ground, seeing footprints in the mud. Small prints. Sarah’s footprints. Adrenaline fueled the thumping of his heart, and he forgot all about his head injury.
He followed the prints, taking two steps for every one of Sarah’s, jogging as the rain pelted his face and the wind continued to whistle through the cornfields along the worn path. He ignored the pounding in his head that seemed to accelerate with his heartbeat. He had to find Quinn.
Brett pressed forward, thinking of her, praying he wasn’t too late. He shimmied along the path between the rows of the knee-high cornfield, hoping the guesthouse would be on the other side, the side he couldn’t see from Sarah’s house. She’d said it was on the grounds, so it had to be close. He squinted and waved his flashlight ahead, but all he could see was a green carpet of cornstalk leaves. He pointed it to the ground, following footprints.
After twenty yards, his shoes and uniform were drenched. Droplets trickled down his face. His head spun, his vision blurred, and he nearly slipped on the wet earth, but he wouldn’t slow. Quinn’s sweet face filled his thoughts, riveting him forward at a pressing pace.
The rain cooled the summer heat and stirred up the mud, creating a dirt odor. But as he neared the woods, he smelled the familiar winter scent of logs burning—one of Quinn’s favorite things to do on a cold day. But why would someone build a fire on a hot summer day?
He stopped and leaned over to catch his breath, silently swearing for not staying in better shape. His chest burned from the exertion.
A wave of vertigo suddenly filled him. He swayed and held his head, squeezing his eyes shut and waiting for it to pass. When it did, he wiped the rain out of his eyes with his sleeve and plowed ahead through the rows of corn.
Finally the stalks ended, and he saw a modest home and an old model blue truck. The truck. His hand rested on his gun. He crept toward the house, ducking low. His head pounded. The house and the truck looked deserted.
He crouched near one of the truck’s tires, listening, then released the holster’s safety snap and removed his gun.
He still heard no voices.
He sidled to the front porch to where a wooden bat rested against the house. Was that what had hit him? He withdrew his weapon and peered in through the window. Lit table lamps allowed him to see inside, but the halfway-drawn drapes gave him only a limited view. He edged his body across the outside of the house, hugging the stone with his back, listening again.
Nothing.
He turned the knob, cracking open the door. Hot air billowed out. The only sound came from the rain. He kept his weapon drawn and inched his way inside, closing the door behind him. Muddy footprints smeared the floor. A fire had burned to almost ash.
He searched the home, finding only a blanket and pillow on the bathroom floor as evidence of Quinn’s presence. Lifting the blanket to his nose, he thought he could smell her. Tears threatened to spill, but he choked them back. There was no time to get emotional now. His vision blurred. He gripped the sink until the dizziness subsided, closing his eyes until he felt steadier.
He let himself out the front door and circled the home, keeping his back against the house, and found footprints. Voices came from the trees. He ducked around the corner and hid.
Sarah said, “We’re almost there. We’ll put ice on it, and it’ll feel better in no time.”
Quinn cried in her raspy, hoarse voice—the one she had when she was the most upset. “I want my”—she hiccupped—“daddy.”
Brett jetted out from the corner of the house, rage spreading through every nerve cell. He was right. Sarah and Dean were working together.
“Freeze!”
Sarah held Quinn. Dean followed behind. Brett wanted to run to Quinn, to take her in his arms and never let her go, but the cop in him waited. He scuttled toward the three of them and pointed the gun at Dean and then Sarah. “Put her down. Let go of her slowly. Move away from her.”
Dean put his hands in the air like a bad guy in a cop show.
Sarah spoke first. “Brett, let’s get her in the house and get her foot elevated. She’s injured her foot.”
“Do you think I’m crazy? Get away from her.”
Dean dropped his hands and shouted, “She’s not c-c-crazy. She’s my s-s-sister. Don’t talk to her like that.” Spit drooled down his chin.
Sarah’s forehead creased, and she licked her lips. “Brett, let me handle this so no one gets hurt.” She motioned to her brother, her jaw twitching. “Dean is not himself right now.” Then she did a double take at Brett and said, “You’re head is bleeding. What happened?”
“Don’t pretend not to know.” Brett waved the gun. “I trusted you once, but not again. I’m not going to fall for your acting. For all I know you’re the one who hit me. Set Quinn on the ground and move away. I’m not leaving here without her.” Anger foamed like breaking waves inside him.
She shook her head. “I didn’t hit you.” She turned to Dean. “Did you hit him?”
Dean hung his head.
“Are you crazy?” she said to her brother. She turned to Brett. “I can’t believe you think I’m a part of this. Brett, be reasonable. I’m sorry. I had no idea Dean hit you or he was involved. Not until fifteen minutes ago—when I found the backpack in the barn. I wasn’t positive he had Quinn until just before you got here.”
“How am I supposed to believe you? Why didn’t you come tell me?” Seeing her sad eyes begging him to believe her made him dizzier. “Don’t mess with my mind.” He waved the gun. “Put her down!”
“I didn’t stop to tell you because I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t think you’d understand. It’s not the way it seems.”
“And how does it seem?”
Sarah nodded to her brother. “He’s upset. Our father …” She shook her head. “He did … things. Said things to Dean that he shouldn’t have. Dean is not going to harm Quinn.”
“Look, if that’s the case, then set her down and walk away.” He motioned toward Dean. “Take him into the house and call the police.”
Sarah’s eyes filled with tears. Dean’s face lit up like the end of a cigar, and his nostrils flared. His breathing turned to panting.
Quinn whimpered, still in Sarah’s arms.
Brett aimed his pistol into the air. “Now, before I shoot!”
Quinn screamed.
Dean gripped Quinn’s arm in an effort to take her from Sarah. “No! Quinn is my f-f-friend. She wants to stay with me, right, Quinn?” He hugged her to him.
Quinn’s eyes bulged, and she reached her hand out to Brett. “Daddy!”
Sarah spun, turning her back to Dean and causing him to lose his grip on Quinn. “Dean, do what Officer Reed says. He’s a good man. A good father. Quinn loves him.”
“Listen to your sister.” Brett took another step toward Sarah and Quinn, who whimpered and turned her head from Brett to Dean. Dizziness swam in his head.
Sarah set Quinn on the grass and nodded for Brett to take her. She then ran toward Dean and placed her arm around his waist. “Everything is going to be okay. Shh, let me help. Let’s go inside.”
“You said I’m c-c-crazy. I’m not crazy.”
Sarah said. “No, you’re not crazy. I’m sorry I said that.”<
br />
Brett swayed. Quinn’s form blurred. He couldn’t stand. His knees buckled. He needed to scoop Quinn into his arms, but he was seeing double.
Suddenly, Dean broke free from Sarah’s embrace and bulldozed into Brett, headfirst, knocking him to the ground. The gun fell out of Brett’s hand as he fell back, limp and overcome with vertigo. He couldn’t move. The yard spun. But he caught a glimpse of metal.
Dean had snatched the gun.
Quinn, still lying in the grass, screamed and crawled toward her father.
Brett’s vision faded to nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sarah shrieked. Her heart fluttered. “No!”
She ran to Brett, throwing herself on the ground, covering him and wrapping her arms around Quinn. She turned to her brother, keeping her voice soft. “Dean, look at me. Don’t shoot.” She held out her hand. “Give me the gun. You don’t want to hurt anyone. You’re a good person. A brave man. But brave men know when to give up.”
Quinn hiccupped a sob and choked her arms tighter around Brett’s neck. “Daddy, wake up.”
Sarah’s chest tightened, her heart feeling like it would explode. How could she make Dean understand? There was no way out for him, but fear gripped her. Certainly he wasn’t capable of shooting them?
Dean’s body collapsed onto the ground ten yards away. The rain had turned to drizzle. He shook his head, and his bottom lip turned down. He held the gun limp in his lap, muttering disjointed words Sarah couldn’t understand. Something like, “No one believed … I tried to tell … they s-s-said if I told I’d be sent away.” Sarah crawled toward him and searched for peace in his eyes.
The crazed look was gone, but in its place was a blank stare, as if he was detached, disassociating with reality.
She had to reach him and searched for his eyes. “Dean, none of this was your fault. Dad was a bad man. But he’s gone. Give me the gun.” She touched his leg.
Tears ran down his cheeks, and then it was as if a lightbulb switched on, clicking him back to the present. He waved the gun at Brett. “He’s just like Father. He’s going to hurt her.” He said the words with less force now, like he was tired. “I-I-I have to protect Quinn.”
“No, Dean. Officer Reed is a good man. Not all men are bad like Dad.”
He met her eyes, his brows creased as if he was confused. “But I saw him at your office that day I was washing your windows.” He pointed to Brett. “I thought that’s why you t-t-took Quinn away from him. I thought he was b-b-bad.”
Sarah placed her hand on his shoulder. “I understand why you thought that, but it’s not true. He’s a good father.” Rain trickled down her face. She wiped it with the back of her hand. “Dad’s gone now, Dean. Let it go.” She kept her eyes on the gun.
Dean laughed and raised the gun. At first he chuckled, but then his laugh grew to a loud, boisterous, booming sound, sending chills down Sarah’s neck. “Do you want to know what I did to him?” He laughed again. “I whacked off his dick.”
Sarah gagged, fighting nausea. Poor Dean. How had she not seen how distraught he’d been? She glued her eyes on the gun, contemplating how she could confiscate it.
“Now he won’t be able to use it in hell either.” Dean laughed again, a menacing, hideous sound.
Sarah glanced back toward Quinn, whose sobbing had turned to hysteria. Brett wasn’t moving. He was probably unconscious. He needed to get to a hospital. Soon! Should she search for his phone? No, there wasn’t time. Every move mattered. She didn’t want to make any sudden or dramatic shifts. If she did she could set Dean off. She turned to him. “Give me the gun.”
Brett moaned.
Dean’s eyes widened. He ceased his crying and lifted the gun toward Brett. His hand shook.
Sarah screamed and reached for her brother’s arm, struggling to take the gun from him, but she was no match for his strength.
Dean jerked himself from her grasp, his eyes twitching and ricocheting in opposite directions. “I’m not st-stupid. I know what’s going to h-h-happen to me.” His voice hung in the air, thick like the humidity. He stood slowly, keeping the gun positioned on Brett.
Brett sat holding his head with Quinn’s arms still locked around his neck. He opened his eyes and, upon seeing Dean, put his body in front of Quinn’s, shielding her.
Dean, with the gun still pointed at Brett, backed away until he’d turned the corner to the front of the house, until Sarah could no longer see him.
“Dean!” Sarah scrambled to stand.
Brett, suddenly alert, reached out and clamped a hand around Sarah’s ankle. “Let him go.” With his other hand, he reached into his belt clip for his cell phone, squinting. “Call 911. I can’t see.”
Sarah shook her head, cried, and kicked at Brett, breaking free from his grasp. “No! Let me go!” But before she could stand and gain her balance, a gunshot rang out, the noise blaring and final.
She screamed. “Dean!”
#
Brett heard the shot but couldn’t move. Too weak to get up, he closed his eyes and handed the phone to Quinn. “Call 911. Remember how Daddy showed you?”
Her crying slowed to hiccups, and several seconds later he heard her talking on the phone. “Please help us.”
When the dizziness subsided, Quinn still lay beside him patting his face with her tiny fingers and whispering into his ear. “The police are coming, Daddy. Wake up.”
She held the phone up to his ear, and an operator’s voice sounded like it was coming from a place far in the distance. “Hello?”
Brett told the operator who he was as sirens howled in the distance.
Quinn’s bony arms flew tight around his neck, choking him, but he didn’t care. She held his shirt in tight fists, trembling, her sobs returning. “Stay awake, Daddy.”
“I will.” He held the phone. The operator wanted him to stay on the phone until help arrived.
Brett held Quinn, never wanting to let her go. The knot in his throat broke free, and all his pent-up tears flowed. He tasted their saltiness and breathed in Quinn’s scent—dirt, mingled with a hint of maple syrup from the pancakes he’d made her days ago. So much had happened since that day. He inhaled deeply, thanking God he’d found his baby alive and safe.
He thought of Ali, and his father, and how short life was and let his tears flow. The lump in his throat broke free, and he remembered his father telling him, “There’s no reason men can’t cry.”
The sound of Sarah’s wailing from the front yard tore through him. He shouted, “The ambulance is on the way, Sarah. It’s coming.” He ached for her, wanting to go to her to hold her in her grief, but he couldn’t leave Quinn. Finally, Sarah’s cries quieted to gentle sobs.
Sirens blared in the distance, the sound growing closer and closer, making Brett’s screaming head throb. He hoped Clay was on his way because Brett couldn’t move. The rain had stopped, but the smell of burnt gunpowder lingered in the air.
He felt a hand on his arm and opened his eyes again to see flashes of multicolored lights against the trees and Clay and Officer Hudson kneeling beside him.
Clay said, “How you doing, man?”
Brett smiled. “Better now that you’re here and my baby is safe. What took you so long?” He motioned to Quinn at his side, and tried to sit.
Clay rested his palm on Brett’s chest. “Don’t get up. The EMTs are going to lift you into the ambulance.”
Several men approached with a gurney. Officer Hudson knelt at Quinn’s side. “They’re going to take you to the hospital too, to make sure you’re okay.”
“I hurt my ankle,” she said, holding it.
Officer Hudson said, “Oh, I see. It looks ouchy. The doctors will fix it.”
Brett said, “Don’t let her out of your sight, Hudson.”
“I won’t. Promise.”
As they lifted him to the gurney, Brett asked, “How’s Sarah’s brother?”
Clay shook his head. “He didn’t make it.”
Poor Sarah. He
squeezed his eyes shut, and the tears pinched out. Oh, how he wished he could take away her pain. He thought of Ali and her death, and Dean—two lost souls, their lives warped by the cruelty of others. Why was there so much pain in the world?
#
An hour later, Brett and Quinn lay side by side in the Hursey Lake Hospital emergency room—the same place Ali had been. At Brett’s insistence, the nurses had arranged for Quinn to be in the same room with him. No one could separate them now. Given the circumstances, the staff had accommodated his request.
Clay had promised that Quinn would have a full examination to determine whether she’d been molested. Brett hoped like hell she hadn’t been.
He lay prone on the gurney, his head feeling as large as a pumpkin, an IV in his arm. The room smelled of alcohol swabs and disinfectant. A short gray-haired nurse dressed in light-blue scrubs with a name tag Hazel, RN, closed the curtains between their space and the next patient.
“Is my daddy going to be okay?” Quinn asked, sitting on her gurney.
Hazel smiled. “We hope so. He’s in the perfect place. We’re going to take care of him—get him upstairs into a room—and you can stay with him.” She lightly touched Quinn’s nose. “What about you? Are you going to be okay?”
Quinn nodded.
“Where does it hurt?” the nurse asked.
Quinn pointed to her ankle. “Right here. I twisted it.”
Hazel examined Quinn’s ankle, took her temperature, and listened to her heart. “Does anything else hurt?”
Quinn shook her head.
Brett spoke, his voice shaky. “Quinn, we need to know if anyone touched your private parts.”
Quinn closed her eyes and shook her head.
Brett asked Hazel to move his gurney closer to Quinn’s so he could see her. The nurse wheeled him to where he could meet Quinn’s eyes. The vertigo had subsided. “I found Lambie under the bed at Mrs. Stookey’s son’s home. Do you want to tell me what happened there?”
Quinn bit her lip. “He wanted me to sleep with him, but I didn’t want to, so I hid under the bed where he couldn’t reach me.”
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