She hated telling them about the notes she’d found in the shed. She knew it would reopen wounds, bring back the grief of her mother’s death to them all.
She had hoped that she and Chase would be able to get to the bottom of it without involving any of her family members, but it appeared that wasn’t going to happen.
After paying for the meal, she left the café and headed for the sheriff’s office. She needed to find out if Ramsey had gotten any reports back from the lab about the notes she’d received. She realized it was probably a useless trip, that if he had learned anything, he would have already told them.
But she wasn’t ready to return to the ranch where Chase would be. She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t talk to him without it hurting.
Entering the sheriff’s office she was surprised to see nobody at the front desk. Usually Molly Richmond would be there taking phone calls and manning the small reception area.
Maybe she took a late lunch, Meredith thought. “Hello?” she called.
The door to Ramsey’s office opened and the sheriff looked at her in surprise. “Meredith, what are you doing here?” He motioned her in and to the chair in front of his desk.
“I came by to see if any of those lab reports had come back yet from Oklahoma City?”
Ramsey didn’t take a seat behind his desk, but rather leaned against it. “Sorry to say nothing has come back. You’ve got to understand that those notes wouldn’t be a top priority in the lab. Why? Has something else happened?”
“I got another note.”
He frowned, his salt-and-pepper eyebrows drawing downward. “What did it say?”
“‘It’s time.’ That’s what it said.”
“And just what in the hell is that supposed to mean?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Did you bring the note with you?”
“No, it’s at the ranch.” She cursed herself for not bringing it to him. “I’ll try to get back into town tomorrow and bring it to you.” She stood, her business here done. “You’ll let me know if you hear anything?”
“Of course,” he replied.
With a murmured goodbye Meredith turned to exit the office. But before she could reach the door an electric jolt struck her from behind.
She had no time to wonder what had happened. It was like a bolt of lightning had slashed down from the sky and she was nothing more than a lightning rod.
The current sizzled through her and she immediately lost control of her arms and her legs. She felt herself falling but was unable to do anything to stop the fall. Her head banged against the floor and darkness descended.
At three o’clock Chase sat on the front porch staring down the road and looking for Meredith’s car. She’d said she’d be home around two or two-thirty, and he was trying not to read anything into the fact that she was thirty minutes late.
She was having lunch with Savannah and he knew how those two loved to talk. She was probably just running late. Didn’t women always run late? Besides, she was in downtown Cotter Creek in the middle of a sun-filled day. What could possibly happen to her there?
He turned as he heard the front door open and smiled at Kathy. She eased into the chair next to him, and for a moment neither of them said a word.
“You ready to leave all this?” she finally asked.
“Yeah. It’s time to get back to the city,” he replied.
“Are you ready to leave her?”
He didn’t have to ask who Kathy was talking about. He released a long sigh. “I have to be ready.”
“Are you sure you’re doing the right thing? She’s a fine woman.”
“The finest I’ve ever met, but don’t try to make me feel bad about the decision I’ve made where Meredith is concerned. I know what I’m doing and I’m doing what’s best for her.”
“God help every woman who has a man doing what’s best for her,” Kathy replied dryly.
Chase remained silent. He wasn’t going to fight with Kathy about Meredith. What surprised him was that he hadn’t expected to hurt while he was doing what was best for Meredith.
Before meeting her, he had thought he didn’t have a heart, or at least knew that his heart was so heavily armored he hadn’t worried about pain. But if there was one thing he’d learned over the past couple of weeks, it was that he did have a heart and at the moment it ached like hell. But he was determined to do the right thing, and the right thing was to walk away from Meredith.
“Regrets are a terrible thing when you get to be my age,” Kathy said. “I don’t regret the things I did, but I do regret the things I didn’t do…like get married and have a family.” She held Chase’s gaze. “Don’t make the same mistakes I did, Chase. Don’t think that work can ever fill the hole that love should fill.”
“Are you through?” he asked with more than a touch of irritation.
“I’m through.”
He looked at his watch. Quarter after three. Where in the hell was Meredith? “Meredith said she’d be home around two or two-thirty,” he said. “I wonder what’s taking her so long?”
“If you’re going to let her go, then leave her alone,” Kathy exclaimed. “She was having lunch with Savannah. She’s a big girl and doesn’t need you to set a curfew for her. Besides, maybe she’s in no hurry to come back here and spend time with you.” She got up and went back inside the house.
He stared off in the distance, slowly digesting Kathy’s words. Why would she want to come home and see him? He’d made it quite clear to her the night before that he intended to break her heart.
She’d told him she loved him, and there had been a moment when hope had shone from her eyes. And he’d taken that hope and crashed it to the ground. No wonder she wasn’t eager to come back here and face him again.
He was probably worrying for nothing. Still, he couldn’t quite shrug off the simmering concern he felt. “It’s time.” How he wished he knew what those words implied. Was it a threat of something bad or the promise of something good?
He knew that Meredith hadn’t wanted to open a can of worms by telling her father about the notes, and yet at this very moment he realized how foolish they’d both been not to talk to Red, not to ask him about the identical notes they’d discovered in the shed.
She’d managed to lull him into keeping the secret and suddenly that felt like the wrong thing to do. With this thought in mind, he left the porch and went searching for Red.
He found him in the study, seated at the large mahogany desk. “Am I interrupting?” he asked from the doorway.
“Not at all. I’m just paying bills. A little interruption would be welcome.” Red motioned him to the chair in front of the desk. “I have to admit the house is going to feel empty with you and Kathy gone.”
“I have a feeling it won’t be long till Kathy will be back here,” Chase replied.
Red smiled. “I’m glad. Smokey has been a good friend, like a brother to me, and there’s nothing I’d like to see more than him happy.”
“I have something rather sensitive to discuss with you,” Chase said, his mind formulating where to begin. “Meredith found some strange notes in the shed in the boxes of your wife’s things.”
Red frowned. “Strange notes?”
Chase nodded. “There were three of them. One said something like ‘You’re my destiny.’ Another said ‘You will be mine,’ and the last one said ‘It’s time.’ You know anything about them?”
“Not those specifically, but it wasn’t unusual for Elizabeth to occasionally get those kinds of notes, especially in the first year or so that we moved out here. Some of the California paparazzi got hold of the story that she was abandoning her Hollywood dreams for love and came out here and took pictures. After they appeared in a couple of the tabloids, she got a ton of mail, both good and bad.”
“So you’d have no idea when exactly she might have received those particular notes?”
“Don’t have a clue. Why is it important?�
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“Meredith has been getting the same notes. They appear to be written by the same person. We think that same person sent her the roses.”
Red sat up straighter in his chair and frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t quite know what to make of it. Do you?”
Chase shook his head. “All I know is I don’t like it.”
“Why hasn’t Meredith come to us about this? Why hasn’t she told me or her brothers?”
“I think at first she was embarrassed. She thought it was just somebody who was too shy to approach her and she was afraid of being teased.”
Red sighed. “Her brothers have always teased her unmercifully, but it’s only because they care about her.” He leaned back in the big, overstuffed leather desk chair and stared at a place just over Chase’s shoulder. He sighed again, then directed his gaze back to Chase. “Do you think she’s in danger?”
“I think it’s possible,” he replied.
“Where is she now?” Red asked.
“She went into town to have lunch with Savannah. She should be getting back anytime now.” Chase looked at his watch. It was just after three-thirty. She wasn’t so late that he should feel panicked, and yet the first stir of panic whispered in his ear.
“I was wondering if you’d mind if I borrowed your car. I thought maybe I’d take a drive into town,” Chase said.
“You think she’s in trouble now?” Red asked.
Chase weighed his options. He knew Red wasn’t in the best of health. He also knew he had absolutely no reason to believe Meredith was in trouble except his gut instinct, and that instinct had been wrong before. “Nah, I just need to pick up a few things before Kathy and I head back to Kansas City tomorrow.”
Minutes later as he drove away from the ranch he told himself he was overreacting to Meredith being late. It wasn’t as if she were hours late back to the ranch. And it was possible she was intentionally staying away because she wanted to spend as little time with him as possible.
Still, all the rationalization in the world couldn’t dissipate the knot of tension in his chest. He drove slowly, checking along the sides of the road for her car, grateful that he didn’t see it.
As he approached the place where Elizabeth West had been found strangled to death next to her car, he hoped and prayed that the man responsible for that crime didn’t now have Meredith in his sight.
It was quarter after four when he drove down Main Street and breathed a sigh of relief as he saw Meredith’s car parked in front of the café.
He parked next to her car and as he got out he scanned the streets, surprised to see that Sam Rhenquist wasn’t seated on the bench in front of the barbershop as he usually was. He hoped the old man wasn’t sick.
Dismissing Sam from his mind, he stepped into the café and looked around, seeking Meredith and Savannah. They were nowhere inside.
Maybe they’d gone to the newspaper office after lunch, he told himself. There was no reason to get excited just because they weren’t still in the café.
He tried to quiet the whisper of panic inside him as he strode down the sidewalk toward the newspaper office. He was being ridiculous. There was absolutely no evidence that the notes were written by anyone who meant Meredith harm.
When he stepped into the newspaper office, Savannah was seated at the front desk and talking on the telephone. She held up a finger to indicate she’d be with him momentarily.
She finished the call. “Hi, Chase. Have you come to give me a tidbit of inside investigation gossip for the paper?”
“Actually, I’m looking for Meredith, but it’s obvious she isn’t here.”
“We had lunch earlier, but we parted ways about an hour ago,” Savannah replied.
“Did she mention that she had errands to run or something in particular to do? Her car is still parked in front of the café.”
“She didn’t mention anything, but if her car’s still there then she’s got to be around town somewhere,” Savannah replied. At that moment the phone rang, and with a murmur of apology Savannah answered.
Chase gave her a wave, then left the newspaper office and gazed first up the street, then down. Meredith wasn’t the type of woman to spend an afternoon shopping at the few dress shops Cotter Creek had to offer.
So, where might she have gone? His gaze fell on the Curl Palace and he wondered if she might have gone in to get a hair trim. Although it seemed unlikely, he hurried down the sidewalk toward the beauty salon.
A glance inside let him know Meredith wasn’t there. He stepped back out on the sidewalk, the panic that had been just a whisper before now screaming inside his head.
Chapter 14
Pain crashed through Meredith, pulling her from the darkness and into some semblance of consciousness. The back of her head felt as if it had exploded outward, and every muscle in her body hurt.
Tentatively she opened her eyes, shocked that the profound darkness didn’t go away but rather lingered. It was then that she became aware of the vibration coming from beneath her and the feeling of motion.
Disoriented, she flung her hands out and tried to straighten her legs, but with a shock realized exactly where she was…in the trunk of a car.
What car? Sweet Jesus, the pain in her head made it almost impossible to think. And she had to think. She had to figure out why she was in a car trunk and how she had gotten here.
Her hand automatically went to her waist for her gun, but it was gone. She had to figure out what was happening, but it was impossible to focus on anything other than the desire not to throw up. Her head pounded and the motion of the car combined with the fumes of exhaust threatened to make her sick.
Fear added to her illness, a rich raw fear that clawed at her, that forced any thought she might have out of her head. She gave in to the fear, screaming at the top of her lungs as she kicked with all her might against the sides of the trunk.
It was only exhaustion that eventually forced her to stop. She panted to catch her breath…and remembered. She remembered lunch with Savannah. She envisioned watching Savannah leave the café. She’d remained behind and finished a cup of coffee, then had left and gone to see Sheriff Ramsey.
She’d talked to the sheriff about the notes and asked if lab reports had come back, then she’d turned to leave. And nothing. Sheriff Ramsey? Was she in the trunk of his car? But why? What on earth was going on?
Her brain began to work overtime. Sheriff Ramsey was the first person to the scene when her mother had been murdered. Or had he been there all along? Had he been the one who had strangled her, then pretended to find her car and investigate the murder?
Oh, God. Oh, God. She tried to draw deep breaths to still the rising hysteria inside her. She was in trouble and nobody knew it. Nobody knew where she was. Nobody suspected the good sheriff was a murderer.
Where was he taking her? She had no idea how long she’d been in the truck, how long they’d been driving. She had no idea how long she’d been unconscious, how many hours had passed since she’d entered the sheriff’s office.
She had to think, not about what was happening, but rather about how to get herself out of this mess. Ramsey was soft and older than her. It was possible she might be able to kick him and run if the car ever stopped. The only way she’d have a chance to escape was if he opened the trunk.
She knew the moment they left paved road and turned onto a gravel road. The gravel crunched beneath the tires, and his speed slowed. She remained lying in a fetal position, gathering her strength so she could take advantage of any opportunity for escape.
Chase. Her heart cried his name. Did he realize she was missing? She’d told him that she’d be back at the ranch around two or two-thirty. Had enough time passed that he knew she was in trouble?
She tensed as the car slowed to a mere crawl, then stopped. The engine shut off and her heart raced with terror. Rolling over on her back, she pulled her legs up, preparing to kick the first body part that came into view when he opened the trunk. Kick and run, her brai
n commanded. She couldn’t think of Chase. She couldn’t think of her mother. All she needed to focus on was kick and run.
Her heartbeat was the only thing she could hear, booming in her head. She tried to keep her breathing deep and regular as she prepared for the fight of her life.
The driver door opened, then slammed shut. She heard his heavy footsteps on the gravel as he approached the trunk. Despite the pounding of her head and the ache of every muscle in her body, she stayed focused on the trunk lid. Kick and run.
The trunk opened but before she could strike out she was hit with a stun gun. As electricity jolted through her she was helpless, a mass of uncontrollable muscles. Unable to move, she watched in horror as Sheriff Ramsey leaned over her and placed a sweet-smelling rag over her nose and mouth. Darkness crashed around her.
Consciousness returned in bits and pieces. She became aware of the fact that she was in a bed. Fresh-scented sheets covered the soft mattress beneath her, and for a moment she thought she was in her own bed, safe at the ranch.
Then she remembered. The trunk…Sheriff Ramsey. Her eyes snapped open and she found herself in a small bedroom. The walls were covered with photos and posters, and an open closet contained gowns and dresses that were vaguely familiar.
But it was the photos that held her attention. Photos of her mother. The room wasn’t a bedroom, rather it was a shrine to Elizabeth West.
She sat up and took a moment to look around, noting that the window the room boasted was boarded up and the door a jail cell door complete with steel bars.
She flung her legs over the side of the bed and stood on trembling legs. There was a doorway to her right with no door and a peek inside showed her that it was a bathroom. Everything in there was sturdy plastic and there was no mirror on the wall, nothing that could be used as a weapon or to aid her escape.
Everywhere she looked a picture of her mother returned her gaze. There were publicity shots, newspaper clippings and snapshots. In some of the snapshots it was obvious her mother hadn’t known that her picture was being taken, in others she smiled into the camera with the ease of a woman accustomed to being photographed.
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