4 Malice in Christmas River (23 page)

I turned her over on her side.

Her eyes were closed and her tongue lulled out listlessly.

She was still breathing, but she’d been knocked out cold. A large red welt was rising on the side of her face.

My mouth dropped open a little.

I had a feeling… a very strange feeling about what had just happened.

Someone had been looking out for us. And it wasn’t George Hardin, or any of the deputies.

I heard Daniel’s crutches crunching gravel behind me. A moment later he was leaning over my shoulder, looking at the girl who had tried to murder him.  

“What a waste,” he said bitterly, rubbing my shoulder. “Just a complete waste.”

I looked back at him, not in the least bit surprised he’d react like that.

There were a lot of things I could have said about Ashley McSween in that moment. A lot of ugly, unpleasant things. Daniel could have, and should have, had even worse things to say.

But instead, he didn’t think about how this girl had hurt him and almost killed him.

All he could think about was how she had hurt herself.

Daniel’s compassion was one of the things that made him such a great sheriff. And it was one of the reasons I loved him so much.

Just then, a round of low sirens erupted from somewhere down the road. I watched as the blues and reds approached the driveway and turned down it.

Owen pulled up and jumped out of the car.

“Is that her?” he shouted over the pouring rain.

Daniel nodded.

“Is everyone okay?”

We both nodded this time.

Neither one of us told Owen what really happened.  

We didn’t tell him that The Sandman had just saved our lives.

Chapter 65

Ashley McSween never made it to her first day of class at Stanford University.

She wasn’t going to make it to
any
class at Stanford. She was too busy sitting in the adult county jail, biding her time until the trial for attempted murder got underway.

Laurel had made her own bail after being arrested, too. She was sulking somewhere back at the ranch. She was facing charges of aiding and abetting a criminal and interfering with an investigation. It was possible that her and her daughter could end up being cellmates at the prison once the trials were over.

Erik had gotten his story. And it was a juicy one, all right. He told me that the paper’s readership tripled in the days following the scandal, and that the story made the rounds on the AP wire. Laurel’s husband pulled out of the mayor race a few days after Erik’s story ran. Erik got a promotion to a coveted beat. And I supposed that was fair. I might have solved the crime, but he pointed me in the right direction. I told him that we were about even now. He said he still owed me a story on my pie shop. I told him that I’d been in the paper enough lately, and could make do just fine without another story.  

A week passed, and things had finally started getting back to normal. And I was more thankful for that than I had ever been thankful for anything in my entire life.

The past weeks had been nothing short of insanity. Between Daniel getting hurt and the journey toward discovering who was behind it, I was in bad need of white sands and tropical waters.

But Daniel and I had missed our chance for all that. And now, with him well on his way to becoming completely healed, we were both heading back to work this next week.  

Sure, I was disappointed. But the most important thing was that Daniel, Warren, Huckleberry and I were safe, healthy, and all together.

Well for a little while anyway. Now that things had settled down, one of us had decided it was time to leave.

Warren was headed back to Scotland. He said he had some unfinished business there. And I knew he wasn’t talking about his beer education.

So, with a heavy heart, I drove the old man over to the Redmond Airport one early morning at the end of September.

“You know, it seems to me there are more goats out here than there were before,” he said, peering out the window as the highway snaked around a goat pasture.

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “Seems there’s as many goats on this stretch as there’s ever been.”

He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

“Damn, Cinny, the
Goatpocalypse
is happening right under your nose, and you don’t know a thing about it.”

“
Goatpocalypse
?”

“You heard me right,” he said. “
Goatpocalypse
. They’re multiplying rapidly and soon, we’re all gonna be drowning in goats. Like one of ‘em SyFy movies about the sharks.”

“So you’re saying there’s going to be a
Goatnado
?”

“Exactly.”

“You’re paranoid,” I said.

“No, I’m just keeping an eye out for you. If I don’t, who will?”

He grinned.

“I mean, you ever hear a goat scream?” he said.

I shook my head.

“Geez, sounds just like a person. You better look it up on Youtube when you get home. That’ll give you a whole new perspective on the goat, I tell you what.”

I cracked a smile.

Warren was talking nonsense. But I wasn’t going to stop him. I knew why he was doing it.

It was his way of coping with leaving again.

He talked that way for a while. All the way to Redmond. All the way through the airport parking lot. All the way through the small terminal. All the way to the security checkpoint.

Finally, I set his roller luggage down and threw my arms around my grandpa.

That stopped him talking nonsense for a minute at least.

“I love you,” I said, planting a kiss on his cheek. “It means the world to me that you came all the way back. I want you to know that.”

I pulled away. His eyes were a little glassy.

“It wasn’t even a choice, Cinny Bee,” he said, kissing me on my nose.

I looked down and cleared my throat.

This had been hard the first time I dropped him off at the airport.  

And somehow, it was even harder now.

Warren was only going to go to Scotland for a year. But now, with his new love interest, it seemed possible that it might be a longer stay than we’d both originally thought.

And though it was hard not to be, I couldn’t be selfish right now. He was happy. And I would never stand in the way of his happiness.

No matter how much it pained me to see him leave again.

I wiped at my runny nose.

“Now, you go back to Scotland and make that beautiful gal yours,” I said. “And don’t mess it up. I’ve already counted her in for Thanksgiving. So you better bring her back home. Okay?”

He smiled bashfully.

“Deal,” he said, choking on the words. 

He looked down to hide the tears.

“Okay, Cinny Bee,” he said. “I better get going before I lose all my dignity.”

“Too late for that, old man.”

“I love you, Cinny Bee.”

I choked back tears of my own.

“Love you too, Grandpa.”

He pinched my cheek. Then he turned and reached for his roller bag. He started walking away, but stopped for a moment and glanced back at me.

“You know, you ought to take it easy on that man of yours,” he said.

I furrowed my brow.

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean to say is, we can’t all be as strong and bullheaded as you,” he said. “Your strength scares us sometimes. So just take it easy when you can, Cinny Bee.”  

He winked at me and turned around.  

I watched him as he walked through security. He waved at me when he got through. I waved back, letting the tears go.

There wasn’t a devil in the world quite like my grandfather.

I was going to miss him terribly… again.  

But it made me happy that he had somebody waiting for him over in Scotland.

Chapter 66

I backed up into the front door of
Ornate Ornaments
, my hands full with two large pumpkin cheesecake milkshakes from Benny’s Shake Shack, which I had stopped by just after dropping Warren off at the airport.

I’d figured something out recently. Something that had been bugging me a lot.

And now… now it was time to finally have that talk with Kara.

She’d stopped by the house the morning after Ashley was arrested to make sure that we were all okay. But we hadn’t had much time for a proper talk then.

Now that everything had settled, it was high time for one.

I walked into her shop, passing a couple of old ladies who were oohing and awing over a set of penguin ornaments that Kara had recently carved out of wood.

“Such fine quality,” one of the ladies said in a stuffy mid-Atlantic accent.

I couldn’t help but smile.

She was right at that.

I walked into Kara’s craft studio.

“Kara, you here?” I asked.

“I’ll be out in just a second!” a muffled voice sounded from the bathroom.

I set her shake down and took a seat at her crafting table. A few moments later, she came out of the bathroom, looking a little pale.  

She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the familiar orange and white shake container that was Benny’s trademark.

Her face lit up.  

“Cin, you have no idea how much this means,” she said, sitting down and grabbing the shake. “I’ve been craving one of these since… well, since we had one a few weeks ago.”

She grabbed it and started sucking the straw with such force, I thought she just might inhale the entire container.

So much for her juice cleanse.

We drank our shakes in a peaceful silence.

She finished before I was even halfway done with mine. Then she let out a long, happy sigh.

“That’s
so
much better,” she said.

I cleared my throat and then looked deep into my best friend’s face.

“How long have you known?” I asked.

Her eyes suddenly grew wide.

“What? What do you mean?” she said, her voice cracking a little.

“I mean,” I said, taking in a deep breath. “I mean how long have you known that you’re pregnant?”

If Kara didn’t love that pumpkin cheesecake milkshake so much, I think she would have regurgitated it right then and there out of shock.  

Chapter 67

I figured out that Kara was pregnant, oddly enough, after doing a little research on Brad Houston.

I should have figured it out earlier. And I liked to think I would have if I hadn’t been so caught up in my own drama.  

But as it was, I’d had a lot on my plate the past few weeks.

After the Ashley fiasco had died down, I realized that while everything had gotten back to normal, there was still something that wasn’t quite right.

Kara and I had drifted apart, and while the obvious answer was that it was because of her hot and heavy affair with Brad, I realized, after some careful contemplation, that it seemed completely out of character for Kara to do something like that.

Sure, she drooled over every good-looking guy who came through Christmas River. But the real Kara, the Kara I knew, had a sincere heart. In all the time I’d known her, she’d never cheated on any of her boyfriends. She’d always been a good friend to me, and frankly, I just couldn’t believe that she had it in her to do something that cruel to John.

One night, I googled Brad’s name, remembering that he’d said something about bringing his business to Christmas River.

On the first page of search results, I found his business web site.

“Pink and Blue Bows: Interior designs for baby rooms, children’s rooms, and teenagers too.”

I was shocked to see it. I wouldn’t have thought bad boy, motorcycle riding, leather-jacket wearing Brad would become an interior designer in a million years. Let alone an interior designer who worked on kids’ rooms.

That got me thinking, though.

I thought about the way Kara had been acting lately. About how she’d said she was on a new diet. Kara, of all people. About how she didn’t go to the Rodeo this year. How strange that was, because she enjoyed it so every year. She enjoyed sitting out in the sun, drinking beer and watching the—

Then I realized I hadn’t seen Kara drink anything stronger than tea for a while.

Not that Kara was a big drinker, but—

And then… then it all fell into place. It all suddenly clicked and snapped.

And I understood why she’d been acting so distant and strange lately.

She’d been going through some madness of her own these past few weeks.

After she pulled her jaw from up off the floor, she lifted her eyes and looked at me.

“I found out that morning when I burned my hand here at the shop,” she said.

“That long?!” I said, trying not to shout. “How could you not tell me about this sooner? How could you keep a secret from me this long? I’m your best friend!”

She let out a great big sigh.

“I know,” she said. “You didn’t deserve that. But you see, I was just… You know how I was talking to you about all that stuff around then? About how I thought maybe I’d shortchanged myself over the years? Well, getting pregnant has a way of bringing all that up. I guess I was… well, I was just freaking out a little bit about it, you know? And then there was John to think about. I mean, we’ve talked some about marriage, but I hate thinking that I was forcing him to marry me because of this. And then you were going through your stuff, and I just didn’t want…”

She bit her plump lower lip.

“I just didn’t want to be a burden to you.”

“
Kara
,” I said. “Honey, you couldn’t burden me if you tried. You’re a blessing in my life.”

Normally, practical Kara would laugh at the absurdity and sentimentality in that statement. But she didn’t. Instead, her eyes looked water-logged and heavy.

She wiped at her nose.

“And then this whole Brad thing just snowballed out of control,” she said. “I mean, John got some ideas, and then he passed those ideas onto you. And I just didn’t know how to tell you. I mean, for God’s sake. I felt like you were all out to get me.”