by Jane Blythe
“Oh, Abe, I’m so sorry.” With an unsure hand she reached out and gently rested it on top of his.
“I lost it, I had never been so angry in my life. She started screaming, telling me that when I left, I left her pregnant, and stress caused her to lose the baby. She blamed me. Said it was my fault.”
There was so much pain in his words, this big, tough man was just a big softie inside, and she wanted to take away his pain. “That was unfair of her to blame you,” she said passionately. “You were risking your life to keep her safe, to make sure that baby had a safe place to grow up. If she didn’t see what a wonderful guy she had and threw that away then that was her loss.”
Abe quirked one side of his mouth up into a smile. “Thank you.”
She felt herself blush at the way he was looking at her. Abe was a hard guy to read, he didn’t give much away, and she wasn’t even sure if he had felt the same heated desire that had brewed between them last night.
She liked him.
She was attracted to him.
She wanted to get to know him better.
She could see him as someone she could fall in love with.
She could see them having a future.
But what did he see when he looked at her?
* * * * *
4:01 A.M.
She was blushing.
Meadow was so adorable when she blushed.
Her gaze skittered around the room, and Abe wondered what she was thinking. She’d been supportive when he’d told her about the mess his first relationship had disintegrated into, taking his side, and although he wished he hadn’t woken her with his screams he wasn’t embarrassed about it. He’d seen things while he was in the marines that no person should ever see, and it had left a mark on him that nothing could ever erase. It was a part of him, but that Meadow just accepted that without even saying anything was sweet, and it made him want to kiss her even more than he had last night when he’d ached to take away her fear.
But kissing Meadow would be a mistake.
Because she needed stability right now, she needed a foundation to build her life on. She was pregnant and hiding from a vicious killer. She was about the last woman on the planet he should be thinking about getting involved with because he didn’t do stability.
He didn’t do relationships either.
What he did do was one night stands.
He was quite the expert at them, but Meadow wasn’t the kind of woman you did that with. She was the kind of woman who deserved it all, the whole dating, marriage, kids, dogs, white picket fence, everything.
“I’m running from my husband,” Meadow suddenly blurted out.
Okay, he hadn’t expected her to admit it.
The first thought he had was that he hated that she was married, even if it was to a violent psychopath.
The second was that she was in so much danger.
The third was that he had to get as much information as he could out of her so that he could send her husband to prison for the rest of his life.
“Your husband abused you,” he said gently, a statement not a question.
Meadow’s eyes shimmered with unshed tears, and she nodded slowly.
“Is he a doctor? Is that why you’re afraid of them?”
“No. He had a friend, he’d come around sometimes when my husband hurt me too badly but didn’t want to take me to the hospital.”
“You’re husband, he’s a killer too, isn’t he?”
Meadow shook her head so quickly she sent a couple of tears tumbling down her cheeks. “He’s not. He never hurt anyone, only me.”
The way she said only me had his blood boiling. She said it like she wasn’t worth worrying about, like she was nothing, and that he shouldn’t really blame this guy for whatever he did to her.
Grabbing her arm with enough force that her eyes widened and she trembled in his hold, he shoved her sleeve up and gently ran his finger along a white line that ran from the back of her wrist halfway up to her elbow. “He did this to you? What did he use? A knife? A switchblade? A razor? Did he like watching you bleed? Did it turn him on? Did he want you to scream while he cut you? Did he like watching tears trickle down your cheeks just like they are right now?” Abruptly he released her arm and touched the pad of his forefinger to her wet cheek, catching the tears that fell. “So you think you deserved all of that?”
“N-no, well, y-yes,” she stammered, uncertainty blooming in her face.
He was the sheriff, he knew how this went. Her husband would have isolated her, drilled into her that she was worthless, while terrifying her into keeping what he did to her quiet because no one was going to believe her anyway. He hated the way these predators preyed on the vulnerable, and growing up feeling lost and alone with no one to love her had made Meadow susceptible to this man’s advances.
“I was tired of being alone, I was tired of having no one, all I wanted was someone to love me, but no one even blinked twice in my direction. I wanted to just stand up in a crowd and scream I’m here to see if anyone even noticed me. I felt invisible. And then I met him. He made me feel alive. He was the first person who ever said he cared, who ever told me that he loved me. Do you know how stupid I felt when I realized that it was all just a lie? He didn’t love me, all he wanted was someone stupid enough to give themselves up to him willingly.”
“He manipulated you,” he gritted out.
“I went to him willingly,” she countered.
“How old were you?”
“Nineteen, but I knew what I was doing, at least I thought I did. Until I moved in with him.” Her blue eyes clouded over, and when she spoke it was like she was reciting things she had been told. “I’m not very pretty, I’m not very smart, and I’m weak, it’s no wonder nobody ever wanted me. That’s why my mother gave me away, that’s why I was never adopted as a child, and that’s why no one ever wanted to date me, there was nothing in me that made me worthy, nothing that—”
With a growl, Abe grabbed Meadow, tugged her off the bed, and pressed her up against the wall. His mouth descended on hers, kissing her like he’d wanted to ever since he saw her walk into that diner. She tasted sweet, and although she was surprised at first she quickly pressed her body into his, her hands lifted to his hair, and her fingers twirled through it.
This was a bad idea.
Abe knew it was and yet he made no move to stop.
Instead, he curled one hand around her bottom, dragging her closer so she was all but plastered against him. His other hand touched her breast and began to knead, enjoying the way she moaned into his mouth under his ministrations.
Why was he doing this?
Meadow had already been used and taken advantage of by one cold-hearted monster, and now she was being taken advantage of by another. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t a monster, but he was definitely cold-hearted, and even on his best day, he didn’t deserve someone as sweet and innocent as Meadow.
Finally, he snapped to his senses and gently pushed her away.
“Don’t stop,” Meadow begged, her eyes heavy with lust and she tried to draw him back down to kiss her again.
“Meadow, we can’t,” he tried to keep his voice soft, not let any of the mixed-up mess of emotions that were swirling around inside him show.
“Why? Because I’m still married?” she asked.
No. Although that was definitely part of it. He didn’t do married women even if that woman had been tricked into marriage by a psychopath who only wanted to hurt her while she was only a teenager.
“Because your husband wants you back, because he somehow followed you here and killed two people.”
“No.” She shook her head firmly. “He’s not a killer. I swear he’s not. He’s an evil man, and he hurt me badly.” Shame filled her face and voice, and he hated that her husband had made her feel like she was unworthy, that she was nothing. “He’s not a killer, Abe. I don’t know who killed your two victims, but it wasn’t him.”
“Then who ran you off the r
oad?” he asked. He knew that he was right, Meadow was just in denial because she couldn’t cope with the possibility that he might somehow get her back.
“N-no one,” she stuttered.
“Then why do you have this cut?” His fingers touched lightly at the edge of the gash on her forehead. Then he let his fingers trail down her cheek, pausing when they reached the hollow of her neck where her pulse was pounding, then he put his hand on her chest. “And who bruised your ribs? Someone ran you off the road, and according to Billy and Darren Sutton, that person hightailed it out of there as soon as they showed up. I know you don’t want to face it, but he managed to find you, and now he’s killing people and leaving dozens of flowers behind. He’s making his own meadow. I need you to tell me his name. I need you to tell me where you came from and everything you can about him so I can find him before he gets what he wants. You.”
Meadow’s plump pink lips pressed into a narrow line, she was shutting down again. The possibility that her plan to run hadn’t worked was too much for her to cope with at the moment, but she didn’t have a choice. Her husband was coming for her.
The need to stop the man had suddenly taken on a whole new dimension. Meadow was too special to wind up back in the hellhole she had fought so hard to escape.
She needed to realize that everything her husband had told her about herself wasn’t true. She wasn’t weak, stupid, or ugly. In fact she was the opposite of all those things.
His hand still rested on her chest, and he could feel her heart hammering wildly. “You’re a beautiful woman, Meadow, it’s not you who has the problem, it’s him. You ran away. You’re clearly terrified of him, and you’re carrying his baby, but you ran because you knew that if you stayed you and your baby were going to be hurt, I wouldn’t say that a weak person could do that. You’re a strong woman, Meadow. Strong and beautiful.”
Because he needed one last kiss, he curled a hand around the back of her neck and dipped his head, whispering his lips across hers before he turned and walked out of the room.
* * * * *
12:48 P.M.
He could still feel Meadow’s lips on his own.
Still smell the lavender shampoo she used, still taste her sweet mouth, still feel her soft body pressed up against his.
Abe knew he was in big trouble.
He felt like such a jerk. He was leading her on, letting her think that maybe there could be something between them, that they had a future, that a relationship might be in the cards, and that wasn’t true.
There would never be anything between them.
Well, maybe friendship—but if he was completely honest probably not that either—but there wouldn’t ever be anything more. He wasn’t in the market for a girlfriend, he’d done the whole getting engaged thing already, and all he’d gotten out of it was a dead baby and a boatload of guilt.
He wasn’t going through that again.
But Meadow was vulnerable right now, she was seeking stability and a fresh start, she wanted a life where she and her baby could be free, where they could live their lives without fear, and he didn’t want her to think that his home was going to be that place.
“You haven’t been listening to a word I said,” Julian said.
Abe blinked to clear his vision and realized that what his cousin had said was true. He was at work, he was dealing with two murders in his quiet little paradise, plus Meadow being run off the road. He really needed to focus.
And yet he couldn’t.
Every time he tried, his thoughts invariably returned to Meadow and that kiss.
He was in trouble.
Really big trouble.
The more he kept telling himself that he wasn’t interested in a relationship and that he was only helping Meadow because it was the right thing to do, the less he believed it.
“What is going on with you today?” Julian asked. “We have two dead people. Two murdered dead people. You’re the sheriff, it’s kinda your job to figure out who did it and why.”
“I know who did it.”
“Oh?” Julian raised a brow. “You know who the killer is?”
“I don’t know his name, but it’s Meadow’s husband.” Abe hated that word, especially in conjunction with Meadow. Why did she have to be married? Why did it even matter that she was married? It wasn’t like he intended to do anything about his attraction to her so it didn’t matter that she was already married. All that mattered was finding her husband before he came for her because even though he wasn’t interested in her, he didn’t want to see anything bad happen to her.
“Meadow is married?”
“Apparently.” Part of his brain—the part that seemed to be fueled by hormones and not common sense—wished that she was unattached. Although he should be happy that she wasn’t available, the fact that she was married should make it easier to keep his hands off her. Pity his mind didn’t work like that. If he wanted her he’d take her, the fact that she had a husband wouldn’t get in the way of that. The man was a piece of filth who had tricked a vulnerable teenager into marriage. That marriage was nothing more than a piece of paper.
“She told you that the killer was her husband?” Julian asked.
“Not exactly. She told me that the man she was running from was her husband, but she claims he wouldn’t hurt anyone but her and that he’s not the one who ran her off the road, but I don’t buy it.”
“Does she know how he followed her here? This isn’t really the kind of place you’d just stumble upon if you’re looking for your punching bag,” Julian pointed out.
“So you think it’s just a coincidence that Meadow is on the run and someone ran her car off the road and then drove off when someone else showed up?” In his mind—in his gut—he knew that Meadow’s husband, the hit and run, and the murders were all connected. They were all perpetrated by the same man.
“Maybe Meadow getting run off the road was an accident, a drunk tourist perhaps, he goes to check that the other person is okay, but he panics when someone else shows up worrying that he’ll get in trouble.”
“I suppose,” Abe huffed. It was a plausible theory and although it made sense his gut was telling him that wasn’t what had happened. “And maybe I could believe that, but someone murdered Aaron Turner for the sole purpose of stealing his car, then they murdered Carla Briscoe and left her in that car surrounded by a meadow’s worth of flowers.”
“Murdered doesn’t really quantify what he did to Carla,” Julian muttered.
He couldn’t argue with that.
Murdered didn’t even begin to describe what that man had done to Carla Briscoe. The nineteen-year-old had been beaten, caned, raped, and sodomized before he killed her.
“The medical examiner said she was still alive when he put the knife in her,” Julian said, his face hard, but he could see the slight quiver in the corner of his cousin’s mouth, and Abe knew how affected he was by Carla’s murder.
Julian wasn’t the only one.
What that man—Meadow’s husband—had done to Carla was perhaps one of the most vicious things he had seen one human being do to another. While he had seen a lot in his years in the marines, life in River’s End had been quiet. There wasn’t a lot of crime here and that was the way he liked it, and now since Meadow’s arrival there had been two murders, it was all connected to her. Her husband had somehow found where she was, and he was determined to make her suffer before he took her back.
“It’s Meadow’s husband, Julian,” he said quietly. He didn’t want to spend time convincing his deputies that these cases were related to his houseguest, he just wanted to find out who the man was and get him behind bars before anyone else died.
His cousin sighed but nodded. “Okay, let’s say you’re right—and I’m not saying that you’re not, just trying to remain a little more objective than some other people.” He arched a pointed brow. “So if it is her husband, how are you going to get her to start talking? He tortured and slaughtered that poor woman, and stabbed that n
ice Mr. Turner over a dozen times just for his car.”
Mr. Turner was an elderly man, nearing ninety, who was still very active for his age, he went fishing and hunting, and he baked the most amazing gingerbread boys and girls for all the children in the town every Christmas. Although he was quiet and kept mostly to himself, the man was sweet, and everyone in the town loved him. That he had fallen victim to this killer was a tragedy and was most likely a crime of opportunity. Mr. Turner lived alone about two miles outside of the town and fit as he was for a ninety-year-old man, he would still have made an easy mark.
Who was going to be next?
There was no way the killer was just going to move on. If he was here for Meadow, he would keep killing as he circled closer waiting for his opportunity to grab her.
“Did CSU find anything on either victim or the car?” he asked. Since he’d rushed off yesterday afternoon as soon as he heard about Meadow being run off the road, he hadn’t been there when they arrived.
“According to their report, they didn’t find anything. Looks like he was careful with each of the murders, and he wiped down the car with bleach before he put the flowers in it and left,” Julian replied.
“So we have nothing,” he growled, frustrated. Meadow was his responsibility as long as she was staying in his home and he wasn’t going to lose her on his watch. He hadn’t been there for Talia when she was pregnant, and whether the stress of being alone had been what caused the miscarriage or not he hadn’t been there for his baby either. There was no way he was going to lose another baby, and if Meadow’s unborn child got in the hands of her husband he was sure the child would be tortured and no doubt molded to be what its father wanted.
“Well, not nothing exactly.”
“What do we have then?”
“Meadow. You think that this is her husband then you need to convince her to tell you everything she knows about him. A name might not help us find him, but it will help, and if we know more about him we might be able to figure out his next move. She trusts you, Abe, you have to get her to talk before anyone else in our town dies.”