Ransom River (48 page)

Will fought it. His eyes begged her to back off. He raised a hand, almost like he wanted to stroke her hair, to hold her against his shoulder as she had held Addie. Almost as though he wanted to scroll back through the years, to pin time, to whisper in her little girl’s ear as he had when she was five.

“I have to know,” Rory said. “Boone’s been shot.”

“Oh dear God,” Sam said.

“He tried to kill Addie. He nearly killed Seth. He would have killed me if he could. If he survives, he’ll try.”

Sam put a hand over her mouth.

“And Riss is out there. She’ll try too. She’ll come after me. She’ll come after me because she’ll try to get to Lee. Over the money. The goddamned
heist money he stole and brought here to our house. It’s a clusterfuck and I can’t stop it unless I know the truth. I deserve to know,” she said. “Do I call the FBI? Do I hire a PI? Do I go on TV and beg Lee to phone home? ’Cause I’ll do that, unless you tell me it’s pointless.”

Sam said, “Will.” Her voice had the weight of a thousand years in it.

One last second. Her dad held off. Then the dam broke.

“No. He didn’t…” He cleared his throat.

“He didn’t get away to Mexico that night, did he?” Rory said.

Will shook his head.

“What happened?”

Sam walked to the window and stared at the lowering sun. It edged her face with shadows. “He died.”

Bam,
like a cannon shot. “How?” She could barely see. “Where? When?”

Will said, “Don’t cross-examine us. This isn’t a courtroom.”

“No. It’s our family’s history and our future. It’s survival.”

Sam slumped. “Rory. For God’s sake. Don’t make us…”

“Did you know he was dead? All these years?”

“Yes,” Will said, and his face seemed to age before her eyes. “Yes.”

Something in his bearing silenced her. Anguish. Her hands fell to her sides. When her dad spoke again, it was softly.

“Everything I told you about that night was true. He showed up here, wounded. I was horrified. I never dreamed Lee would get himself involved in something so bad.”

He turned to Sam. His eyes were mournful. She stared out the window.

“But he was my brother. I couldn’t turn my back on him,” he said. “That’s why he came here. He knew brotherhood would get him through the door.” He paused. “And that’s when he turned on me.”

“Turned—”

Will walked to the window and put his arms around Sam. She said nothing. She took hold of him. Will exhaled.

He turned to Rory. “How could I ever explain to you—how could I ever go on, if you knew…”

His voice trailed to ashes.

Rory whispered, “Knew what?”

Her mom turned from the window. “It was self-defense.”

Hot tears leaped to Rory’s eyes. “No. Dad.”

Sam spoke in low, emphatic words. “He did it to protect you.”

Will closed his eyes. “I never wanted it to happen. Never. It was…” His lips trembled.

It’s not true.
“I don’t understand.”
Not true.
“Oh my God.” Rory raised her hands, baffled, begging for a denial, an explanation, angelic intervention.

Sam said, “Lee wanted to get across the border. And he wanted to take you with him.”

“Me?” Rory said.

Will gestured at her. “That look on your face, right there. That’s how your mom and I felt when he turned up that night.”

“Why would he want to take me with him?”

The wind chimes rang. Sam said, “Because he was your father.”

T
he light in the kitchen sank to a stinging red. Rory shook her head. “Lee was not my father.”

Sam stood framed by the sunset. “He was your birth father. Yes.”

“Mom.” Rory reached for the counter to brace herself. The words seemed to be coming at her from a random letter generator, making no sense.

“I was eighteen. Had just moved here from San Antonio. I was lonesome and stupid.”

Sam looked small, tough, and implacable. Not a moment’s kindness in her voice. Not for Rory, not for herself.

“Going to school, waitressing, feeling out of place. He came in the diner and we—” She paused, and gathered herself, and forced her voice flat. “You want me to say the rest? I was gullible, romantic, couldn’t hold my liquor. It was one time. Worst mistake I ever made.” She inhaled. “But the best possible outcome.” She eyed Rory and her voice cracked. “Beautiful outcome.”

Will reached for Sam’s hand. She took it and held it firmly.

Rory put a hand in front of her mouth.

Will said, “Sam told me about it at the outset. She was completely honest.”

“I was desperate,” Sam said. “Will told me I didn’t have to be.”

Rory’s eyes stung. “Did Lee know?”

Sam’s gaze said,
What do you think I am, stupid?
“I wised up real quick.
I was an evening’s entertainment to him—he was a million laughs back then, and he liked having an audience. But if I hadn’t married your dad, Lee would never have remembered my name.” She shook her head. “You couldn’t have paid me to tell him.”

Will said, “We eloped three months after we met.”

“And that’s what you need to know,” Sam said. “I’m Will’s wife. He’s my husband. You’re our daughter.”

Her voice choked. Rory’s head felt like a melon about to burst.

Uncle Lee. All those years, doting on her, treating her like the princess he always wished Riss was.

“Lee found out,” Rory said.

Will said, “Years down the line. He got an inkling. He figured out the timing. He could count.”

The sharpness in his voice, like a switch cutting the air, took her aback.

Rory thinking:
Riss. Riss, my sister.

“Did he confront you?” she said. Knowing she was avoiding the worst part, the hatchet through their lives, the words
It was self-defense.

“He hinted,” Sam said. “Sniffing around the subject. So bit by bit we pulled away from him. That only made him more suspicious. Then one day he flat-out asked me. Asked if he had a bigger litter than he’d thought. That was the word he used.
Litter.
” Her face was flat, but her voice was acrid.

“He was miserable with Amber,” she said. “He was planning to leave her. I didn’t know it then, but he was planning the robbery with his—his
gang
—and planning to use his cut to get away for good. Mexico, that was his dream. Without a needy wife and that wild little boy of hers. Without that troubled daughter of his. Oh God. Beautiful Nerissa turned out to be cracked from the bottom up. Lee knew Riss was troubled. He was scared of her. And he started…” Another tremor in her voice. “He started looking for a replacement. Replacements.”

“He wanted me,” Rory said, tonelessly. “And you.”

Sam straightened. “Lee didn’t come here that night for help from his brother. Your dad’s too noble to tell you that, but I will. Lee showed up
looking for a nurse and maid and bedmate.” Her voice gained steam. “Bleeding. Angry, with a gun in his hand. Knowing his life here was well and truly screwed, everything shot, including him. Knowing he’d blown everything, and trying to salvage something by stealing something new.”

Will said, “He demanded that Sam go with him to Mexico.”

“As if I’d drop my life and go on the run. The gall. The absolute idiotic, fantasist gall,” Sam said. “Then he said, ‘In that case, I think it’s fair I take my daughter with me.’”

Bony fingers seemed to grab the back of Rory’s neck.

“Lee tried to force his way into your bedroom,” Sam said. “I tried to stop him.”

“No.” Will’s voice was furious. “He tried to take our sleeping child. You threw yourself bodily at him. He had a gun and you threw yourself in front of Rory’s door.” He turned to her. “Your mother was willing to die to keep him from taking you.”

The ghost of a memory tightened around Rory’s neck. Her, nine years old, climbing in the window and stopping, scared. The nightmare in her mom’s unseen voice, the thuds that weren’t thunder. Seth nearby, ready to run. The confusion and strangeness she felt as she hung on the windowsill and saw shadows play across the strip of light beneath her bedroom door.

Sam said, “Will tried to pull Lee away from me. Lee attacked him. Punching, kicking, on the floor in the hallway and living room. Will tried to wrestle the gun from his hand.”

She briefly covered her mouth. “It was terrifying. It was hell. Hell, here in my home. And my husband was trying to save me and our little girl. And it was his own brother trying to destroy us. Rory, that was the worst part. His own brother.” She grabbed a breath but her words would not stop. “Lee wasn’t sane. He wasn’t even human. He was punching Will and trying to get an angle with the gun. He was ready to shoot your dad.”

She looked beyond fierce. “I jumped on Lee. I truly did. I was out of my mind, Rory. And he had a gun,” she said. “And…”

“He was going to shoot your mother and steal you,” Will said. “I had to stop him. Just stop him. I had to.” He took a breath, worked his lips, and then said it. “I punched him in the throat.”

Sam squeezed his hand.

“Punched him so hard it broke something. And he went down and…”

He turned and walked to the kitchen table and collapsed on a chair. He put his head in his hands.

Sam said, “Will didn’t mean to kill him. And it was self-defense. Airtight goddamned righteous self-defense. Don’t care if a court would see it that way. It was.”

She walked to the table and put her arms around him.

The silence hummed. Outside, the wind chimes clashed like blades. From the family room, Disney music tingled, girlish, giggly.

Rory hung as if in suspended animation. “You didn’t call the police.”

“There was a van outside carrying twenty-five million dollars in stolen money. A dead man on the living room floor,” Sam said. She spread her arms. “Heat of passion, lovers’ triangle, a kid in the middle—Rory, don’t you know what the Ransom River police would have made out of all that? It would have destroyed us.”

It already had,
Rory thought.

She said, “You didn’t trust the police department. You thought they’d skim the money and lay the blame on you.”

Will nodded.

“You saved me,” she said. She didn’t think she’d ever said more bitter words. “Saved me. And bore the weight.”

“It was worth it,” he said.

He looked broken. He looked lost. He seemed afraid to meet her eyes.

“Where is he?” she said.

Will closed his eyes. “Buried in the mountains. In the national forest.”

“With the money?”

“Near enough.”

The sun winked out behind the hills and bled to red twilight. Rory
pushed off from the counter and walked past her parents and out the back door. A chill permeated the air. Her clothes clung to her, damp. Her abrasions and bruises throbbed. She walked to the back of the property, to the avocado tree. She leaned against the trunk. Above her, the tree house seemed to tilt to one side, innocent and lonesome. In her mind she heard laughter, childish ideas, fear. That night. It was a shooting star that tore through her life. She looked at the landscape before her and, for a moment, couldn’t identify anything.

In the kitchen, her parents’ phone rang. A second later her dad stepped onto the patio.

“It’s Seth. He wants to talk to you.”

Her throat was tangled in barbed wire. She shook her head. “Later.”

Will spoke quietly into the phone. His shoulders sagged.

Rory said, “Wait. I’ll take it.”

Listlessly Will handed the phone to her.

“Seth,” she said. “Get protection for Lucy Elmendorf and Jared Smith.”

Grigor Mirkovic hadn’t blinked at destroying the trial of the people charged with killing his son. He spat on the justice system. But he would seek to avenge Brad’s death.

“Mirkovic will try to get the defendants before the cops get him. Don’t you agree?”

Seth hesitated only a moment while processing her words. “On it.”

“Good.”

“Rory—”

“Not now.” She felt like she was running on a ragged rim, a few seconds from a blowout. “We’ll talk later.”

She ended the call and turned to her dad.

“Boone didn’t make it to the ER,” he said.

The chill in the air felt prickly. In the east a blue twilight painted the sky. Rory felt only a pale sense of relief. And underneath it, scratching like a feral animal, another fear. Where was Riss?

Her dad stood on the patio, waiting. She knew he’d wait all night, all
weekend, the rest of his life. Over the eastern hills, a white disc of moon began to rise.

“Dad. The money. You remember where it’s buried?”

“I could never forget.”

She walked back to the house. He followed. When she came through the kitchen door, Samantha simply looked at her, waiting. Her life was in Rory’s hands. All their lives were.

Rory said, “I need a map and a flashlight. The moon’s up but it’ll be dark in the forest.”