Ashley Ridge (Haunted Hearts Series Book 3)

by Denise Moncrief

  He nodded.

  “When my brother and I were first born, Cooley lived in the house with Celeste. He kept promising her he’d marry her, but he never did.” She shifted a little in her chair. Fidgeted with her shirt collar. No doubt, this was a hard story for her to tell. “James was sickly, and Celeste was breastfeeding us. I was thriving and James wasn’t. Cooley kept telling her that it was my fault James wasn’t getting enough milk. I was taking it all, and girls didn’t count for much. So he would make Celeste feed James first.”

  She breathed in deep and continued. “James was still losing weight. No matter what Celeste did. One day she found Cooley standing over the crib. She got this awful feeling that one night I would disappear and she’d never see me again. The look on his face must have scared her. The next day she asked her brother and his wife to take me in. I thought they were my parents for so many years… I can go home to Laurel Heights now. I can tell Celeste I understand why she did what she did. I don’t like it, but I get it. She saved my life…twice.”

  Chase slipped an arm around her.

  “Well, at least now you have answers.”

  Her thin smile tore at his heart. “I’m not sure anymore that I really wanted to know.” She shook hard and rubbed her arms. “Anyway…the part of her diary you’ll be interested in…she talks about Courtney Crenshaw. I think you’ll find out why Haskins has such a strong hold over her, why she’s been so scared to turn herself in. She can’t talk. He’ll kill her.”

  He wondered if the diary would tell him anything new he hadn’t already learned. Over the last couple of weeks, Courtney’s plight had jumped to the top of his to-do list.

  ****

  It was Josh’s first day back on the job since Terrance Phelps had died. When he pushed open the door to the lab, he puffed out his cheeks and scanned the room, hoping he wouldn’t have to face anyone for a few hours. Hiding in the lab seemed like the easiest way to avoid people.

  Tori Downing’s head was angled over a dual microscope. He recalled the day she’d warned him about the scandal that was about to break around Gray and Halsey, the same day that Phelps had kidnapped Ashley. At the time, he’d been too distracted by Ashley and Phelps to give Gray’s undercover operation much thought.

  The situation between Gray and Halsey had only gotten worse while Josh was on leave suffering from a fresh fracture to the same rib Phelps had injured the first time. This time his doctor kept him off the job a bit longer than Josh thought necessary. Although Josh was anxious to get back to work, the rest had done him a world of good.

  Two weeks had given him plenty of time to consider all the ramifications of the very brave, very bold, very stupid thing Gray had done. The day that Lucy Kimbrough died, the same day he told Haskins the truth about how Jeremy had died, Gray had warned the three of them—Ashley, Josh, and Tori—that they had to have each other’s backs. Then Gray had done exactly what he had warned them not to do and had potentially exposed all of them to danger, cutting himself off from them.

  Josh could almost feel the danger in the air as if it were something tangible he could touch. He hated leaving Ashley alone for even one second.

  The danger no longer came from Haskins. It had come from Sheriff Halsey. Who knew how desperate the man was to cover up his grandson’s involvement in Cherish Duncan’s disappearance? Of course, now that the truth had come out and the Trail Ridge murder victim had been identified as someone other than Cherish, the sheriff and his grandson were probably breathing a little easier…about Cherish.

  Halsey had other problems to contend with. He had been jumping from one fire into another ever since the news broke that Gray had discovered Caroline’s body and Halsey had closed the case without an investigation. Of course, Josh knew that was a blatant falsehood. The case had been given over to the State Police, but that organization was denying any involvement with the investigation, effectively leaving Halsey to dangle in the brutal, unforgiving winds of public opinion, and even worse, an FBI investigation.

  He cleared his throat and Tori’s head popped up.

  “You’re back!” Her smile seemed genuine.

  “Yeah, for better or for worse.”

  She closed the distance between them, and to his utter amazement, the woman dared to hug him…tightly. He didn’t know how he felt about that.

  “I get the idea you missed me,” he teased.

  She rolled her eyes. “I missed the load you carried around here. I’ve been working my butt off. It’s kept my mind off…”

  Tori released him and then propped on the corner of a nearby table. He cringed. That particular piece of furniture could be rather unstable. She beamed, her eyes snapping with curiosity, and he knew he was in for an interrogation.

  “So speaking of for better or worse, I hear there’s a new rock on Ashley’s ring finger.”

  Where had she heard that? It was a brand new development. He’d given Ashley the ring only the day before. He chuckled at Tori’s obvious delight. “She reluctantly said yes after I relentlessly begged her to marry me for two weeks straight. I think I finally wore her down. Poor woman never had a chance. Once this smile hit her right between the eyes, she was a goner.” He grinned just for Tori’s viewing pleasure.

  Tori smirked. “You are one of the most arrogant men I’ve ever met.”

  “And Gray must be one of the others.”

  Her mood darkened and he wanted to kick himself for bringing Gray into the conversation. Now that he’d brought Gray’s name up, he had to follow through and ask about him. “How’s he doing, by the way?” He glanced at her from the corner of his eyes, reluctant to face her reaction to his question head on.

  “I don’t know. We don’t talk much, and when we do talk, he gets vague and…I don’t think I know him anymore. He’s too caught up in…his problems.” She fiddled with a paperclip on the desk and then lifted her eyes to meet his.

  He received the unspoken message that passed between them loud and clear. The walls potentially had ears. Even though Josh was well aware of the situation, he and Tori couldn’t discuss it openly and certainly not in the confines of the Hill County Sheriff’s Department. Both of them had been pretending to shun Gray ever since the scandal broke and Gray’s name and reputation had been tarnished.

  Keeping her distance from Gray couldn’t have been easy for her or for Gray.

  The things that were being said about Gray were unfair and the accusations were completely off base. Josh knew it. Tori knew it. There was nothing they could say or do publicly, or even privately, to defend Gray. Josh would have to be very careful what he said. The last thing he wanted to do was jeopardize Tori’s job…or Gray’s life.

  Tori was the inside person in the Sheriff’s Department, reporting what she saw and what she heard back to Shaw Bennett. Gray had gone deep undercover, and Bennett wasn’t giving them any details about the progress he was making. It was probably better that way.

  She rubbed her hands down her thighs, a sign that the conversation had wandered into dangerous territory. She glanced around the lab and then focused on Josh again. “So…I talked to Jen at the State Lab. They’ve finally identified all of the women Phelps kidnapped and murdered.”

  Not the best topic for Josh. The memories were still raw, for him and for Ashley. Just last night, Ashley had jerked out of a restless sleep, screaming and crying. He knew she had, because since his return home, insomnia had become his new best friend.

  After a few difficult days and even worse nights, she had finally agreed to get counseling.

  She had worked hard to remove the stench of Josh’s self-recrimination from the wall of his bedroom. There was only the faintest odor of Jack Daniels wafting throughout the house on a rainy day. He didn’t regret his decision to stay sober. It had been hard. The AA meetings had helped even though he still maintained he wasn’t really an alcoholic.

  Still, he lay awake sometimes, tempted to find the nearest convenience store and snag a six-pack. Then he would roll over
and watch Ashley while she slept. He owed it to her to keep a clear head. The two of them depended on each other, a co-dependency based on the shared knowledge of what could have happened to them and what might still happen to them if they weren’t vigilant.

  He dragged his attention back to Tori, who was gazing at him with a puzzled frown on her face. How long had he been deep in his own thoughts? “Have they been able to connect Phelps to all of his victims?”

  She nodded. “His DNA was on every one of them.” She paused, sympathy radiating from her almost emerald green eyes. “You and Ashley are lucky to be alive.”

  “Yeah, well, I wish things had happened differently than they did. She needed Phelps out of her life, but not that way.”

  She hesitated and Josh knew the hard questions were about to hit him.

  “Shaw told me some strange things happened in the cave.”

  He smiled. “It wasn’t exactly a cave. Just sort of a hollowed out indentation in the side of the cliff.”

  “I hardly think it matters what kind of geological formation it is.”

  “No, I don’t guess that it does.”

  “He told me about how Phelps died. That must have been awful to watch.”

  His whole body jerked. A cold chill racing down his spine, beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead. The memory of Jeremy Haskins’s bony hands pushing Phelps under the water…well, that image would never leave Josh’s mind.

  He was growing tired of the conversation already, tired of standing on his feet. Maybe he wasn’t as ready to return to work as he thought he was.

  “Is Ashley all right?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know if she’s every going to be a hundred percent all right again. I was hoping… I was hoping maybe if got married she could live a peaceful, ordinary sort of life. Uneventful, you know.”

  Tori’s bright laughter cheered him, even though he was sure she was amused at his expense.

  “I don’t think life with you is going to be ordinary or uneventful, Josh. You seem to attract the extraordinary.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, that I do.”

  “Has Ashley gone back to work?”

  He closed his eyes. He’d tried to talk her out of that, but she had been growing more and more restless every day that she stayed cooped up in the house. Ashley needed to work.

  “Today was the first day the clinic opened back up with a new doctor on staff. I’m kind of anxious to hear how she handles it.”

  When he opened his eyes again, Tori was staring hard at him.

  “I’m sure it must have been a shock to the staff to find out Phelps was a serial killer.”

  “She’ll have to answer a billion questions. I just hope she’s ready for that.”

  ****

  At the end of the day, a long hard day filled with numerous questions from nosey people, Josh waited for Ashley in the employee break room at the clinic. He didn’t want her to walk out of the clinic alone. Never again. Or least, not until certain memories had faded. When he had insisted on being there when she got off work, she hadn’t argued.

  When she entered the room and caught his eye, a beautiful smile lit up her face. “I was hoping you were already here. I’m ready to go home.”

  He rose and gently gripped her elbow. “Hard day?”

  “The hardest.”

  “Lots of stupid questions to answer?”

  “From everyone.”

  He squeezed her elbow. “Tomorrow will be easier.”

  “I hope so. Today almost killed me.”

  He wrapped his arms around her, not really caring if anyone saw them together. “I’m sorry you had a rough day. Why don’t you let me kiss it and make it better.”

  She grinned. “You really think your kisses can cure all my problems.”

  “Most of them.”

  “Okay, you can go ahead and try, but I’m warning you, it might take a lot of kissing to make things better.”

  He smiled and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I guess I better get started then.”

  No matter how often or how much they kissed, each time a fire raced through his veins. Ashley had always been able to get to him. She was the love of his life. She always would be, and it gave him a deep sense of hope, a feeling that all was right with the world, for them to be together.

  She leaned back. “When I’m with you, Josh, I feel like everything is going to be all right.”

  He smiled. “I was just thinking the same thing. Well almost…pretty close to the same thing. You know I love you, don’t you? You know I never want us to be apart again, right?”

  She placed her hand on his cheek. “That’s what you keep telling me.” She dropped her arm and slipped her hand into his. “Can we continue this conversation at home?”

  He let her lead him down the hall. She popped the handle on the back door, and he escorted her to his truck. She slid into the passenger seat and buckled up. Anticipation of the evening filled him with excitement. He knew that after everything she’d been through, it might be a long while before she would be able to be physically intimate with him, but he was willing to wait. They would get there one day.

  The memories of how it used to be when they were younger filled him with longing. It was difficult, wanting her so badly and not being able to take their love making to its ultimate conclusion. Still, being alone with her was the sweetest pleasure in his life.

  Yes, he could wait, and he would.

  Before he could shut the passenger door, someone was tapping him on the shoulder. He turned to face a stranger, though something about the woman seemed familiar. He slammed the truck’s door and stepped back from the woman, drawing her away from Ashley.

  “Are you Josh McCord?”

  He nodded. All of his protective instincts firing.

  “Tori at the Sheriff’s Department told me I could find you here.”

  “Okay.” His hand drifted toward the gun holstered at his side.

  Her eyes shifted, scanning her surroundings as if someone might jump out of the bushes and attack her. The woman stepped around him, out of sight of the alley that ran behind the clinic, putting his body between her and whoever might be passing by.

  “I heard you’ve been looking for me.”

  He waited for the revelation that was sure to follow.

  “My name is Cherish Duncan.”

  The End

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Denise is a Southern girl. She has lived in Louisiana all her life, and yes, she has a drawl. She has a wonderful husband and two incredible children, who not only endure her writing moods, but also encourage her to indulge her writing passion. Besides writing romantic suspense, she enjoys traveling, reading, and scrapbooking.

  Accounting is a skill she learned to earn a little money to support her writing habit. She wrote he first story when she was a teen, seventeen handwritten pages on school-ruled paper and an obvious rip-off of the last romance novel she had read. She’s been writing off and on ever since, and with more than a few full-length manuscripts already completed, she has no desire to slow down.

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  OTHER TITLES BY DENISE MONCRIEF

  Deceptions Of The Heart

  The End

  Cross Examination

  The Memory Catcher

  Laurel Heights (Haunted Hearts #1)

  Victoria House (Haunted Hearts #2)

  Shaw’s Landing (Haunted Hearts #4)

  An Impostor in Town (Colorado #1)

  Purgatory (Colorado #2)

  Twin Rivers (Colorado #3)

  Crisis of Identity (Crisis #1)

  Crisis of Serenity (Crisis #2)

  COMING SOON

  Crisis of Security (Cr
isis #3)

  Chelsea Lane (Haunted Hearts #5)

  The Unmistakable Scent of Gardenias (Haunted Hearts #6)

  Second Sight (Prescience #1)

  BONUS MATERIAL

  SHAW’S LANDING

  Haunted Hearts Series: Book Four

  Chapter One

  Ashley Creek, Hill County, Arkansas

  May 2014

  “I’m telling you, Nat, this place has been abandoned for years. No one’s gonna bother us here. There’s even an apartment upstairs we can use.”

  Parker extended his hand and Natalie reluctantly grabbed it. With ease, he pulled her from the boat onto the dock of Shaw’s Landing.

  “Are you sure no one will find us?”

  “Stop worrying. You can see the only way to get out here is by boat. No one comes here anymore. We can hide here for a while, and then we’ll move on, just like we always do.”

  She concentrated on relaxing and slowing her heart rate. “How did you know about this place?” They’d been all over Arkansas. Parker seemed to know all the abandoned buildings in the state. None of them were luxury accommodations, but two people running from the law couldn’t be choosy.

  “I heard about it from my Uncle Luke.”

  Luke? That figured. He was the one who’d led them down the road to trouble. Luke knew all about being a fugitive. As far as she knew, he was still running, probably always would be. Her distaste for Luke came the closest to unadulterated hatred that she’d ever felt in her life.

  She suddenly wished she could go back home, back to school, back to being a kid. She was only seventeen. She should be getting ready to enjoy her summer and not following Parker all over Arkansas. A load of guilt lodged in the bottom of her stomach. Her parents were surely frantic with worry. They probably claimed Parker had kidnapped her. Wouldn’t they be surprised to find out she went with him willingly.

  Nat had thought she loved the bad boy. She’d been wrong. Being with Parker was exciting, but it wasn’t love.