Desolation Point

by Lisa Phillips

  Drew spoke up. “I’ll go with you.”

  “Because you don’t have a ride?” She was still kind of mad he hadn’t told her his last name was North now. Or that he was a famous photographer. Maybe not nationally famous, but she knew from Laney that the business she did online, plus foot traffic in the store, was substantial. People visited the town just to come by the store and look at his photos.

  His voice was softer when he said, “Let me come with you, Ellie.”

  Decision time. Did she want him to stick around, considering everything? Yes. He’d been there for her. He’d protected her. Helped her. A sounding board. Was she mad that he hadn’t told her all the details of his life? Maybe. It was probably not okay that she was mad. It wasn’t like they’d had the chance to share all that much. She certainly hadn’t told him everything about her life.

  Did she even want to?

  Talk about ripping open a wound and letting him take a look. He was going to have an opinion. Or he’d just be sympathetic, and maybe that would be worse. Much worse than finding out he was her favorite photographer.

  Ellie nodded. “Fine. Let’s go. But only because I want to know the story of how you took that picture.” She pointed to her favorite one, hanging on the wall.

  Drew actually laughed. “Deal.”

  It was like a glimmer of good in the middle of everything going on. People trying to kill her. Secrets destroying those who called this town their home. How was she supposed to make sense of all that? And then there was Drew. In the middle of it all, doing his thing. Confident he could handle whatever it was. Get to the bottom of things.

  She wanted to believe it. Wanted to trust him. But how did she do that when her faith in people—and God—had been so eroded?

  Her dad was AWOL. Even Laney was acting weird.

  Ten minutes later they were on the road, headed for her dad’s house. Only there was a problem.

  “What is it?” He shifted in his seat.

  Oh, now he was able to tell that something was wrong? She said, “Someone is following us.”

  . . .

  Drew let out a frustrated sound. If he turned to look, he would be twisting his hip and his knee. Putting too much pressure on both. Right now he was skimming the edge of his leg giving out altogether. At least so far today. Sitting down was more uncomfortable but also didn’t run the risk of him collapsing in front of Ellie.

  He slid his gun from its holster under his shoulder.

  “Easy there.”

  “Just in case.”

  Drew squeezed his teeth together and shifted in his seat to angle his body toward the door. He could lean out the window if he needed to. But this wasn’t the Wild West, and they weren’t likely to get in a shootout. He leaned in and looked at the wing mirror.

  “You gonna call this in?”

  “So Barb can ask me what exactly a suspicious truck looks like?”

  “Guess not.” Neither of them laughed, though at any other time it would have been a joke. “Keep heading to your dad’s.”

  “Agreed.” She took a turn.

  Drew had to brace himself. Still, he couldn’t hold back the wince. As he shifted in his seat, he focused instead on the truck behind them and less on his own discomfort. She turned another corner. The other vehicle made the same move. Five minutes later, she pulled into her dad’s driveway.

  Drew was ready with his phone. He shoved the door open and took a burst of pictures. The truck sped past them.

  In the driver’s seat was a man with dark hair and a beard, holding a pistol up.

  He got images of it all.

  “Drew.”

  He turned to look across the roof of the truck, hopping so he didn’t twist his leg. “What is—”

  The front door was open. She pulled her gun and went first. Drew scanned the street, teeth gritted against the pain in his leg and hip, but he saw no movement. The truck was gone. He headed inside.

  The coffee table had been flipped over. A chair from the dining table lay on its side—what was left of it. Pieces of it littered the floor, along with broken glass. A pool of liquid. Coffee, probably.

  “Dad!” She called out for him. Raced through the house, while Drew took a closer look at the living/kitchen area. Open plan. He’d always liked…

  There was a trail.

  He followed it to the back door, which was ajar. The front had been open. The rear door was only an inch or so cracked.

  He pushed it open. “Will!”

  No answer.

  A plastic patio chair was on its side. Someone had been dragged across the slab of concrete. Blood on the step. Just one spot. Like a blow. He fell, or was dropped.

  Drew winced just imagining what that had felt like. Whoever’s blood that was likely had a concussion.

  He looked back at the house. When had this happened?

  Had Ellie’s father been attacked, or kidnapped?

  Drew called out to him again. Heard the neighbor’s dog bark in reply. The yard wasn’t big. The rear chain link fence was four feet high.

  He scanned it.

  His feet were moving before he even realized he’d seen something. Or someone lying back there, tucked behind the tree. Discarded.

  “Ellie, back here!”

  His knees hit the grass. Drew let out a cry of pain as Ellie burst from the back door. She ran over. “What is it?”

  He rotated onto the good side of his hip. “Call…ambulance.” He could hardly get the words out.

  She let out a cry of her own and knelt beside her father. “Dad.” She prayed aloud, asking for God to save his life. Drew pulled out his phone and dialed emergency services. He handed her the phone.

  “Here.” That was all he could get out before rolling away from them in order to deposit his breakfast back up on the grass.

  “…now.” She hung up. “You okay?”

  Drew didn’t want to talk about himself. “How is he?”

  “It’s not good. Looks like he’s been beaten. The ambulance should be here in a couple of minutes.”

  Her father let out a moan. Low and full of pain. Drew didn’t like the sound of it at all.

  Will’s lips parted and a breath escaped. “Ellie.”

  “I’m here.”

  “…knew you’d come.”

  “Of course I came.”

  It hurt to listen to the old man’s voice, especially when he couldn’t help much right now.

  She said, “That’s what we do, right? That’s what you told me.”

  The EMTs came then, and the two of them moved out of the way while they loaded her father onto a backboard.

  Drew snagged Ellie’s hand because he wanted to hold it. “Let’s go.” He couldn’t drive with his knee as swollen as it was, but he could be with her while she did.

  Ellie nodded. That stark, pain-filled look on her face was there all the way to the hospital. They sat in the waiting room, ready to get word at any moment that they’d stabilized former sheriff Will Maxwell. That he would be all right.

  Drew put his arm around her shoulder and tugged her against his side. “He’ll be okay.” He whispered the words against the skin of her forehead.

  “I need to call Laney. I need to—” Her voice broke.

  “All that can wait. What’s important is that we found him.”

  “But they hurt him.”

  He nodded, knowing she would feel the motion against her hair. “I know. But he’s alive, right? That’s what counts.”

  “I don’t know what I’d do without him.”

  Drew said, “I don’t know what I’d have done without him, either.”

  She shifted to look at him. “Tell me what you mean.”

  “He never said anything, past telling me to pack. I knew what’d happened.” Drew’s breath hitched in his chest. “I knew he was gone. Your dad drove me to Eric and Alma North.”

  “Your family. The people whose name you took.”

  He nodded. “Alma is a photographer but only for fun. S
he taught me everything she knew about cameras. About lighting. That’s why I changed my name. Part of it, at least.” He paused. “She gave me that gift. It’s a legacy now, one that has nothing to do with my father.”

  His heart wanted to break for the pain his dad had been in that led him to take his own life. There was never a way to understand what someone was going through in their own mind.

  And you couldn’t always know that someone was suffering.

  He couldn’t say what the right decision would have been, and whether or not it was the one his dad made. What Drew did know was that God had been right there with him the whole time. Through it all, his Heavenly Father had blessed him with everything he needed.

  And now He had given Drew another thing. He’d given him Ellie.

  Drew’s phone started ringing in his pocket right as the doctor strode into the room. “Ellie Maxwell?”

  Ellie jumped to stand.

  “Your father is asking for you.”

  She turned back to look at him. “He probably wants to speak to you as well.”

  “I’ll be there in a second.” He pulled out his phone and showed her the screen so she’d know he was taking a call.

  He swiped the screen, then watched her walk away. “Yes?”

  “I ran the picture.”

  “And?” What had Mark found?

  “I better be getting overtime for this or something.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine. I told the director what I was doing, and that it was your case. He said take however long it needs.”

  “He did?”

  “I guess you impressed him in Reno.”

  Drew shook his head. That entire job had been on a knife edge—balanced between success and epic failure. Thankfully God had allowed it to fall toward a good result.

  “Tell me what you found.”

  Mark did. Drew felt his eyebrows rise. He started walking for the room where Ellie had gone. He found her in low conversation with her father.

  She started to turn to him. “Wha—”

  He hung up the phone. “Simon Mills is a wanted con artist.”

  Chapter 12

  Ellie took a step back. Her gaze snagged on her father, his purple face. Swollen eyes, cheeks bruised. He had a fractured wrist—suffered when he’d been forced to defend himself—along with three busted ribs. The doctor was worried about internal bleeding.

  She turned to him. “You knew?”

  He didn’t need to answer. The shift of his features was enough to prove his guilt to her.

  “Dad, that guy is a criminal.”

  “Like I don’t know that? There just wasn’t much I could do about it without everything blowing up. I told the sheriff what I could.”

  Drew moved closer to the end of the bed. “Did they put pressure on you?”

  “That’s not a reason to keep something like this a secret.” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Did Drew think what her father had done, keeping it to himself, was acceptable? She swung back to her dad. “I get that you’ve had a bad day, but we all have.” He could tell that from just looking at them.

  And only one of them in this room was hooked up to IV pain medication.

  “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

  “I’m not twelve.” Like her father didn’t know that? “The time to protect me, or talk to me like I’m a child is over.”

  “I’ll always be your father. And until you have children of your own, you’ll never understand that.”

  Hot tears filled her vision. “Nice, Dad. Real nice.”

  “That was a long time ago, baby girl.”

  “So I should get over it? Or I should already be over it?” She waited for only a split second. A courtesy though, considering she didn’t really want an answer. “Why don’t you tell me what to feel? Because obviously you know.”

  Drew stood silent. She wanted to explain.

  He’d told her about his photographs. Eventually she would tell him about all she’d lost, just not now. This was hardly the time, considering her father was apparently the kind of former sheriff who protected criminals.

  She squared her shoulders. “Did you take money from them?”

  She needed to know who “they” were, but first she had to ascertain how deeply her father was involved.

  “It isn’t like that, El.”

  “Then explain what it is like,” she said. “Because you were the sheriff of this county for nearly twenty years. You had to have known someone in this town was buying up property by forcing people out and paying them off. You must know who they are and why they’ve been doing it.”

  “Not like its some great conspiracy.” He suddenly looked older to her than she’d ever seen him look; he’d always been so full of life. It wasn’t just his injuries, though those looked extensive. Maybe fatigue? But there was something about him that was now so…frail. As though life had beaten down on him along with those attacking fists.

  “How am I supposed to know that when you never said anything?”

  He winced.

  Drew said, “Ellie,” caution in his tone.

  She turned to him. The first man in her life who had felt like a true partner. And yet, he’d hidden things from her as well. While it was hardly the same thing, it still hurt. Her head understood the logic that the two deceptions didn’t compare. Drew’s was hardly a deception at all. He’d kept something important to him private and when the time came, he’d shared.

  She, on the other hand, had overreacted.

  Was she overreacting now?

  Ellie pushed out a breath.

  Drew said, “Will, can you tell us who is involved?”

  “I have ideas. What I don’t have is evidence.” It encouraged her that he at least looked mad about that. Maybe frustrated. He said, “Simon approached Sheriff Burgess a few months back. Told him he was tied up in something and wanted out, but he wouldn’t say what it was. First he wanted guaranteed protection. Money. Safe passage out of here.”

  “He’s a conman. He was playing you.”

  Her dad shot her a look. “Why d’you think we gave him nothing? Not until he offered up actionable evidence, which he did not. When Burgess told me, I had the same reaction. He would just take what we gave him and disappear. We’d be back to square one.” He took a breath, offering her a challenge in his expression. “With a theory and nothing to back it up.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Drew said, “Who attacked you?”

  Evidently he wasn’t interested in listening to her and her father bicker. What? That was how they communicated. It worked, didn’t it?

  Her father looked away.

  “Dad—”

  “There were two of them. Muscled me out of the house, into the yard. I think they were going to take me with them but someone disturbed them. For some reason they took off.”

  “So it wasn’t to send a message.” Drew’s voice was solid. As though he purposely fought to have no emotional reaction. Because the person they were trying to intimidate was her?

  She had come to care about him. Could he say the same about her? She wanted to believe it was true, that what she was feeling was mutual. But how could she know? It was scary enough even thinking about laying out her personal side, the stuff she never shared outside her circle of Laney and her dad. But feelings? That was dangerous territory.

  Her dad had gone quiet. Drew, too. Ellie said, “We need to know everything you know about them, Dad. It’s a poison affecting this town, and it’s time it was rooted out and eradicated.”

  “They’re not vermin. They’re your neighbors.”

  “They won’t be for much longer if they’re hurting people—committing crimes.”

  His face shifted. “Yeah? It’s that black and white?” He sucked in a choppy breath that looked painful. “Right and wrong. Good and evil.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Life isn’t that simple, El.”

&n
bsp; “I know that.”

  They needed to leave so he could rest. But how, when someone had attacked him and he was lying there hurt? The sob hitched her breath in the middle. Drew came over and stood close. Her dad lifted his hand, a pulse monitor on his finger. She reached out and held his hand.

  “I want to know who did this.”

  “I know you do, but they won’t like it. You’re already in danger.”

  He thought she’d be in even more danger? “I don’t believe Burgess is innocent. Not for one second do I believe that.”

  “Then you’ve already convicted us all, Ellie. You gotta believe we’re just trying to make the best of it.”

  “By allowing people to suffer?”

  “It was never supposed to come to this.” He used their entwined hands to motion to her and Drew.

  “What about the receptionist at the real estate office? She’s dead. Burgess ruled it a suicide, but there’s no way.” She took a breath. “And Drew’s father? Did he kill himself, or was he another one of their victims? How long have they been killing people to cover up what they’re doing?”

  The door shut. Drew was gone.

  . . .

  Drew leaned against the wall, folded forward and hung his head. This was about his knee and his hip. That was what he wanted to believe, at least. It wasn’t about the fact she’d voiced what he had been thinking. The truth he’d told himself to believe, instead of the bitter pill of reality.

  He repeated to himself what he’d been forced to come to grips with years ago; his father hadn’t been taken from this world by someone intent on doing him harm. He’d chosen it.

  Drew had to accept that. He couldn’t entertain other ideas. If he did, he would mess up all the work he had done to convince himself it had nothing to do with him or whether or not he was worth sticking around for. He had no idea what had gone on in his father’s head. And he never would.

  What he had to do now was keep putting one painful foot in front of the other. Keep moving. Live his life. Be the best he could be, regardless of what anyone else thought.