Carolina Moon (44 page)

She was being lifted away, and she fought mindlessly, her gaze locked on Dwight’s face. Blood ran from his eye, and his cheeks were ripped from her hands.

“Now you know. Now you know.”

“Tory. Stop. Stop. Look at me.”

His face white and running with sweat, Cade held hers until her eyes cleared.

“He killed her. It was always him. I never saw it. He’s hated you his whole life. He’s hated all of you.”

“You’re hurt.”

“No, I’m not. It’s his blood.”

“Cade. My God, she went crazy.” Coughing, Dwight rolled to his side, struggled up to hands and knees. It felt as if he were bleeding from a thousand wounds. His right eye was a burning coal. But his mind worked, and worked fast and cool. “She thought I was her father.”

“Liar!” Rage bloomed again and had her struggling wildly against Cade. “He killed Hope. He was waiting here for me.”

“Killed Hope?” Blood dripped from his torn mouth as Dwight sank back on his knees. “That was almost twenty
years ago. She’s sick, Cade. Anybody could see she’s sick. Jesus, my eye. You have to help me.”

He tried to get to his feet and was genuinely shocked when his legs wouldn’t hold him. “For God’s sake, Cade, call an ambulance. I’m going to lose my fucking eye.”

“You knew they came here.” Cade kept Tory’s arms pinned as he studied the ravaged face of his old friend. “You knew they snuck out at night to come in here. I told you myself. We laughed about it.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Dwight’s good eye wheeled as he heard the slash of wet branches. Carl D., panting with the effort, pushed through the brush. “Thank Christ. Chief, call an ambulance. Tory had some kind of breakdown. Look what she did to me.”

“Sweet Jesus Christ,” Carl D. muttered, as he hurried forward to Dwight’s side.

“He wanted me to run. But I’ve stopped running.” Tory stopped struggling and lay a hand over Cade’s as Carl D. crouched to tie his handkerchief over Dwight’s ruined eye. “He killed Hope, and the others. He killed my mother.”

“I tell you, she’s crazy,” Dwight shouted. He couldn’t see. Goddamn it, he couldn’t see. His teeth began to chatter. “She can’t face what her father did.”

“We’ll get you to the hospital, Dwight, then we’ll sort this all out.” Carl D. looked over at Tory. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m not hurt. You don’t want to believe me. You don’t want to believe what he is has been living side by side with you all these years. But it has. It found a way.”

She shifted, met Cade’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want to believe you, either. But I do.”

“I know it.” And drawing on that, she got to her feet. “The gun he killed my mother with is in the attic of his house, up in the rafters on the south side.” Gently, she rubbed a hand over her throat where the violence of his fingers left their mark. “You made a mistake, Dwight, letting me in that far, getting that close. Should’ve been more careful with your thoughts.”

“She’s lying. She planted it there herself. She’s crazy.” He stumbled as Carl D. pulled him to his feet. “Cade,
we’ve been friends all our lives. You have to believe me.”

“There’s something you have to believe,” Cade told him. “If I’d gotten here sooner, you’d be dead now. You believe that. And you remember it.”

“You gotta come on with me now, Dwight.” Carl D. snapped cuffs over his wrists.

“What’re you doing? What the hell are you doing? You’re taking the word of a crazy woman over mine?”

“That gun isn’t where she said, or it doesn’t match what was used to kill a young police officer and a helpless woman, I’ll give you a big apology. Come on with me. Miss Tory, you best go on to the hospital yourself.”

“No.” She wiped the blood off her mouth with the back of her hand. “I haven’t done what I came to do.”

“You go ahead,” Carl D. told them. “I’ll take care of this. Miss Tory, I’ll be by later to see you.”

“She’s crazy.” Dwight screamed it, kept screaming it as Carl D. pulled him away.

“He’s insulted.” With a shaky laugh, Tory pressed her fingers to her eyes. “That’s the primary emotion running through him right now. Insult, that he would be treated like a criminal. It’s even bigger than the hate and the hunger.”

“Step back from him,” Cade demanded. “Don’t look at him.”

“You’re right, Cade. You’re right.”

“Second time I almost lost you. I’ll be damned if it’ll ever happen again.”

“You believed me,” Tory murmured. “I could feel how it hurt you, but you believed me. I can’t tell you what that means.” She put her arms around him, held tight. “You loved him. I’m so sorry.”

“I didn’t even know him.” And still, Cade grieved. “If I could go back—”

“We can’t. I’ve spent a lot of time learning that.”

“Your face is bruised.” He turned his lips to it.

“His is worse.” She leaned her head against his shoulder as they began to walk. “I was running, and I was going to keep on running, then, all at once there was this life inside me. This rage of life. He wasn’t going to win, he wasn’t
going to chase me like a fox after a rabbit. For once, he was going to know what it was like. He was going to know.”

He would never get the picture completely out of his head, Cade knew. Of Tory, her face bruised and bloody, tearing like a cat at Dwight. And his hands around her throat.

“He’ll keep denying,” Cade said. “He’ll hire lawyers. But it won’t matter. In the end, it won’t matter what he does.”

“No. I think you can depend on Agent Williams to tie it all up. Poor Lissy.” She sighed. “What will she do?”

Tory stopped in the clearing to gather the fallen flowers. The fire had burned down to sputters, and the light, watery streams of it, slanted through the trees. “I’ll come back and do this another time with Faith. This time is for you and me.” Together they walked to the banks of the river.

“We loved her, and we’ll always remember her.” Tory tossed flowers on the water. “But it’s over now. Finally. I’ve waited so long to say good-bye.”

She had tears in her yet, but they were quiet, and they were healing. They glimmered on her cheeks as she turned to Cade. “I’d like to marry you in the garden tomorrow, and wear my grandmother’s dress.”

He took her hand, kissed it. “Would you?”

“Yes, I would. Yes, I very much would. And I’d like to go to Paris with you, and sit at a table in the sunlight and drink wine, make love with you when the sun’s coming up. Then I want to come back here and build a life with you.”

“We’re already building one.”

He drew her close. The sun shimmered in thin beams, and moss dripped with rain.

Flowers, bright blossoms, floated silently down the river.

N
ORA
R
OBERTS

is the #1
New York Times
bestselling author of more than one hundred novels, including
The Villa, Tears of the Moon
, and
River’s End
. She is also the author of the bestselling futuristic suspense series written under the pen name J. D. Robb. With more than eighty-five million copies of her books in print and more than forty
New York times
bestsellers to date. Nora Roberts is indisputably the most celebrated and beloved women’s fiction writer today.