Was she far enough away?
Had Terry been able to track her?
Would she be able to get back under to avoid being hit? Or could she escape through the other side of the creek?
Willa’s chest started to burn. She started to swim up, terrified.
Even more so when something big splashed into the water somewhere behind her.
Willa kicked upward and broke the surface. She hoped the deep breath she’d taken in wouldn’t be her last.
“Willa!”
She was seconds from submerging when she realized the man who yelled for her was Foster Lovett. He had his gun drawn down at a body on the dock. She could just make out the color of Terry’s suit.
But who had jumped in after her?
“He’s in the water, looking for you!”
Willa felt another flare of fear before the meaning sunk in.
“Kenneth!” she yelled, treading water.
It was like her voice was tied to the man.
One second it was just dark water. Then it was the face of the man she’d fallen in love with.
Kenneth was a few feet away but the moment he saw her, Willa could feel his relief.
“Willa,” he breathed. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head. In a fluid motion that didn’t seem real, he swam to her and then pulled her with him to the other side of the creek. The minute his feet could touch the ground, his arms were around her.
“I thought he hit you before I got him,” he said, still out of breath.
Willa noted his face had a few extra cuts and marks than when they’d arrived at the party, but she didn’t focus on that.
Instead he needed to know that she was okay.
So she told him that she was.
Kenneth kissed her on the tail end of her words.
When he pulled back, he let out another sigh of relief.
“What’s that one for?” she asked with a shaky laugh. Adrenaline was still surging through her.
“That kiss was for deciding to wear shoes that I could use as a weapon,” he said, joining in with his own burst of tired laughter. “Dave never stood a chance.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Terry Page died on the docks. Kenneth had every reason to pull the trigger—to avenge his wife and to stop a cold-blooded murderer once and for all—but the truth was that he’d made the kill-shot for one reason and one reason only in the moment.
To save Willa Tate.
Once he’d realized that she was okay, he’d taken a minute to revel in that. Something made easier by the fact that Deputy Park had found and detained the unconscious Dave in the house and that, true to Foster’s word, almost the entire department had shown up to help.
Which worked out nicely considering everyone at the party was confused and that confusion turned to anger. Specifically, Missy Frye. After seeing her husband carted off in handcuffs, she’d attacked a deputy.
It would only be later that she admitted to him across from an interrogation table that she’d had no idea about her husband helping Terry do anything other than work on his golf swing.
“They were friends,” she’d tell Kenneth, still shell-shocked. “They’re both good men.”
Dave’s own words echoed that sentiment when he was questioned later. Right before he told them everything he knew and had done.
“We met at the bar and, after some talking, Terry offered me a way out of debt. I couldn’t say no to it. Plus, it wasn’t much to ask. He wanted me to look for a box and then he wanted me to just focus on a piece of fabric.”
When Dave had said that, Kenneth and Foster had shared a look. Foster had asked what Kenneth had been thinking.
“Why not take the entire box when you stole the piece of fabric from Willa’s apartment? Why did he send Leonard in after you?”
“And why not tell Leonard exactly where the box was so he could find it when he did break in?” Kenneth had added.
Dave had seemed to think the answers were obvious and easy.
“When I went the box wasn’t hidden. Well, I mean it was under her bed but easy to find. She must’ve hidden it later. And about the fabric, Terry said it was important to get it first so he might could have more time to deal with it before anyone realized it was missing. That wouldn’t work if I took the whole box the first time.”
“Why?” Kenneth had asked, genuinely confused.
Dave’s answer had been simple.
Though wholly troubling.
“Because it wasn’t his.”
Kenneth and Foster had shared another look.
“Then whose was it?” Foster had asked.
Dave had shrugged.
“I don’t know but he said he gave it back to the man it originally belonged to. I didn’t ask past that and I don’t think he would have told me had I done so. It’s the only time I’ve seen him look nervous.”
That was all Dave gave them but it was enough to send them back to the Page home to do another sweep, this time looking specifically for the piece of fabric.
They never found it.
“I think we just found our next possible new cold case to look into,” Foster had said when they were done.
Kenneth didn’t disagree but needed to put to rest everything—Terry Page first.
Natalie, Terry’s wife, along with his coworkers had bucked and yelled about Terry being a good, decent man. No one had any idea that Terry was, in Kenneth’s opinion, a sociopath. A killer. A man who was always one step away from deciding to end someone’s life.
Those feelings, however, changed when Josiah Linderman’s body was found in the backyard of the Page family home. He’d been wrapped in a tarp and buried deep. Terry’s father, Kevin Page, had long since passed away but the medical examiner had found enough evidence to corroborate the story Terry had told Willa on the dock.
Josiah had been struck by a car and had most likely died instantly.
A week after his body was found, his son Joshua’s was, too.
Though that had had nothing to do with what Willa had learned out on the dock and everything to do with Lottie, Joshua’s girlfriend at the time of his disappearance.
After Terry had confessed to killing Joshua, Kenneth had reached out to her because he felt that she deserved as much. They’d talked awhile about it all. At least, as much as he could, until Lottie told him a story about the first time Joshua had said that he loved her.
She wasn’t from Kelby Creek and Joshua hadn’t grown up in town, but he’d taken her out to his mother’s grave a year before his death. He’d told her about how she’d liked this one spot where the honeysuckle grew so thick that it smelled like heaven on earth. Joshua had taken Lottie there and professed his love.
“He said he’d never been happier,” Lottie had said, tears in her voice.
Kenneth had then asked where that spot was and, to his surprise, she’d remembered. Her directions from Mae Linderman’s gravestone to her favorite spot in town had been spot-on.
Not far from where Ally had been found in the field.
Kenneth didn’t take Willa with him when he went to check because he already knew that’s where Joshua would be buried.
And that’s where they found him, surrounded by honeysuckle waiting to bloom in spring.
The burial had been a hasty one, though, and among his things was a note that Terry had overlooked.
It was that note now that Kenneth held in one hand, the cigarette case that Willa had found near the creek in the other. Willa was at the window of his office, staring out at the parking lot. She was wearing church clothes and had even fixed her hair up into a complicated-looking bun. She wanted to look respectful but not too sad, she’d told him that morning standing in front of her closet wearing nothing but his T-shirt.
Kenneth didn’t want to point out tha
t once she read what was in the note, she wouldn’t care what any of them was wearing, but he also realized Willa was trying to step away from her own emotions on the matter. There was no getting around that Joshua had left one hell of an impression with his last words.
She hadn’t asked outright, but Kenneth knew that Willa had guessed his reaction at reading the note for the first time had been rough. In fact, he’d cried like a baby in Mae Linderman’s favorite spot.
He’d tell her later but, right now, he wanted to be as professional as he could.
When Willa excitedly said Lottie had pulled up, he made quick work of seeing her into the meeting room. There, Willa gave Lottie a long hug before excusing herself.
She paused next to Kenneth in the doorway, surprising him.
“This is for you two,” she said so only he could hear. “I’ll come back when you’re done.”
And there she went, polite and true.
Then Kenneth began with the part of the story that Lottie didn’t know and what the letter had helped fill them in on since the two of them had last talked.
“My wife, Ally, heard the shot and tried to help Joshua. From what we can guess, she hit Terry hard enough that it almost knocked him out. But not before he was able to shoot Ally twice.”
Kenneth had a hard time with his words but managed to get through them. “After that, Joshua took them as far as he could before Ally couldn’t go on. When he knew that he was getting close to dying himself, he left her body near a spot he thought would be found. He then went in the opposite direction, hoping that, if she wasn’t found, he might be, so Terry wouldn’t get away with it.”
Kenneth slid the note over, along with the cigarette case.
Lottie laughed through tears in her eyes at the case.
“Joshua wanted to be an investigative journalist, you know? But instead of carrying around some kind of notepad, he put paper in that thing and golf pencils.” She took the case and ran her finger over its top. “But this thing couldn’t hold a lot, so the man was always stuffing paper and little pencils everywhere. It made doing the wash a nightmare. I can’t count how many times we fought about it.”
She laughed again then took a shaky, long breath.
At least now Kenneth knew how Joshua had gotten the paper and writing utensil.
“So this is the last thing he wrote?” she asked, looking at the note.
Kenneth nodded. “It’s small, but he had enough time to say a lot. And it’s addressed to you.”
She touched it. Took another deep breath and shook her head.
“I thought he gave up on us. That he didn’t want me anymore. I... I thought so many things about him since then. And now all of this? Can you—Can you read it to me? I... I can’t.”
Willa had warned him that, if she had been in Lottie’s place, she might ask the same, so Kenneth was ready. As ready as he could be.
He straightened, smiled, and said sure.
Then he read aloud Joshua and Ally’s last words.
“‘Lottie,
‘Terry Page shot me out by the creek. A lady named Ally, too. She tried to help me, but he was fast. We got away for a while, but Ally didn’t make it long. I told her she shouldn’t have tried to help, but she said she had no regrets in life and she refused to have any in death. Then she passed. I left her near the road. Hopefully someone will see her. But I’m worried he will, and will hide us all away, so I left. I decided that was a nice thought to die to...no regrets. But I have one—I should’ve proposed to you already but I was scared. I wish I hadn’t been.’”
The handwriting had worsened as the note went on. Joshua had been dying and knew his killer might find him, so he’d finished the note with a simple thought.
“‘I hope you live a long, good life, Lottie. Love,’”
Kenneth thought he probably meant to sign the note but had heard Terry coming and had hid it the best he could.
But not signing his name didn’t take anything away from what he’d said.
“We also guess that this was on him when he passed. A jeweler in town sold it to him the day before. He said he was going home to propose to the love of his life.”
He produced the engagement ring that had been in the box Willa had found. It had been Terry’s trophy from Joshua just as Mae’s picture had been from Josiah and the bullet casing had been from Ally.
Lottie took the ring. She started crying so hard that Willa appeared at her side with a tissue box and hand on her back.
Kenneth watched her try her best to soothe the stranger.
It would be a few weeks later that Kenneth would open up to Willa about the note and admit through tears that, without Willa, he would have never found out that Ally hadn’t been alone when she’d died.
And that, to him, was the most peace he could ask for.
After Lottie left, Kenneth simply took Willa back to his house and put on a movie. He couldn’t for the life of him remember what it was, but with Willa next to him and Delilah across his lap, he didn’t much care.
She’d been staying at his place more and more and he was happy for it. Even though her apartment had been fully repaired and now sported a new security system, Kenneth felt a whole heap better with her at his side. Though, that had more to do with the woman herself than security concerns. Now Kenneth gave her a kiss on her cheek as she laughed at something that was said on the TV. She turned to him, cheeks rosy, and gave him a smile that put the rest of the world to shame.
“What was that kiss for?” she asked, hand absently stroking Delilah’s fur.
Kenneth decided not to tell her that he’d just realized he wanted to spend the rest of his days like this, with her. So he told a little fib.
“For being warm,” he said.
Willa laughed, caught his chin in her hand and pulled him in for another kiss.
Kenneth couldn’t help the one word that came to mind at the touch.
Sunshine.
* * *
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K-9 Recovery
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Chapter One
Love was a language everyone spoke, but few were fluent. Elle was definitely one of those who struggled.
It wasn’t the concept of love that she found difficult to embrace—a union of souls so enmeshed that nothing and no one could come between them. At least, that was what the fairy tales that had been spoon-fed to her as a child and adolescent had told her. Perhaps it was these insipid stories that had set her up for failure in the relationship department. According to those stories, love was built on a foundation of ball gowns, champagne and whispers of forever, while reality peppered her with missed dates, drunken late-night phone calls and broken promises. As far as she could tell, love was all a lie.
The three-year-old girl standing before her was just another reminder of the consequences to the innocent when lies and love went too far.
“Ms. Elle?” she said, her voice high and pleading, though she had asked no real question.
“What is it, Lily babe?” Elle smiled down at the little blonde whose hands were covered with the remnants of cotton candy and pocket lint. She reached into her purse and pulled out a packet of baby wipes.
She was really starting to get this whole caretaker thing down.
“No,” Lily said, pouting as she put her hands behind her back and stuffed her cherubic cheeks into the shoulder of her jacket.
Or maybe Elle wasn’t doing quite as well as she thought.
“Just a quick wipe and then you can head back out to the swings. Okay?”
“I want juice.” Lily smiled, her eyes big and bright. It reminded Elle of her dog, Daisy.
She put the wipes back and handed her a box of apple juice from her bag. “Only one, okay?”
Lily didn’t say anything as she took the juice box, walked over to the sandbox and plopped down, already chatting with a new friend.
She had just been worked over by a toddler. Damn.
Before long, and after a series of carefully constructed arguments on Lily’s side, they found themselves headed back to the Clark house. They walked up the steps to the front door of the colonial-style home, a throwback to the type of residence built by people who’d come to the wilderness of Montana to make their fortunes—and succeeded. The house was hardly the only sign of generational wealth. Everything, down to the three-year-old’s shoes, wing tips she would likely only wear once, spoke of what old money could buy.
When Elle had been three, she had been running barefoot through the sands of Liberia while her parents were taking contracts and acting as spooks for the United States government. Though they had been gone for several years now, she missed them.
The door swung open before they even reached it, and Catherine stepped out. She sent Elle a composed smile, the woman’s trademark—a look of benevolence and influence all wrapped into one.
“She was perfect, as per usual,” Elle said, watching as Lily slipped behind her mother’s legs and disappeared into the belly of the house without so much as a backward wave. “Bye, little one!” she called after Lily.
It was a good thing she wasn’t a sensitive soul or the little girl’s apathy at her leaving would have broken her heart. Actually, it did hurt a little, but she would never let it show.
Surviving the Truth Page 19