The Marshal's Hostage

Chapter Fourteen



Joelle tried to focus on the phone conversation that Dallas was having with Clayton. It was his third call since the one on the porch back at the ranch. They’d left immediately after that, but Dallas had stayed in contact with Clayton, who was on the scene at Rocky Creek.

Where heaven knows what was happening.

Joelle still wasn’t sure what was going on, and Dallas still seemed to be gathering all the details. That’s why this call was no doubt important, but Dallas hadn’t put this one on speaker, so she could only hear his side of the conversation.

Which wasn’t telling her much.

Of course, she was partly to blame since she was having zero luck concentrating on anything other than what Dallas had learned about their baby.

Even now, all these years later, the pain felt fresh and raw. Like a huge wound that would never heal. She’d tried to bury that pain with work, but she hadn’t managed to do that. It was always there, just below the surface.

Now it was right on top again.

Dallas had said often he wasn’t the forgive-and-forget type. He wasn’t. And this was much more than he’d ever had to face.

He would never forgive her.

That broke what little of her heart wasn’t already broken. Sixteen years ago she’d resigned herself to the fact that she could never have Dallas, but it hurt to know that he would hate her for the rest of his life.

Dallas ended the call, and Joelle waited for news of why Clayton had insisted they come out to Rocky Creek. He didn’t volunteer anything, and his jaw muscles were set in iron again. Joelle wasn’t sure if that was because of the baby news or what Clayton had told him. Either way, it wasn’t going to be a pleasant evening.

“What’s going on at Rocky Creek?” she finally asked.

Dallas took his time answering and pulled in a weary breath. “In addition to the secret floor safe, the CSIs found blood on the wooden banister. They decided to photograph it and then remove pieces of it so they could swab underneath. Rudy burst in and told them to stop, that he wouldn’t let them destroy the place.”

“Oh, mercy.” Joelle added a groan.

“It gets worse. Rudy pulled a gun on the CSIs and ordered them out of the building. Now he’s holed up in there, threatening to burn the place down if he doesn’t talk to me.”

She shook her head. “Why you?”

“Who knows. He won’t say. Won’t talk to Clayton, either. He just keeps pointing the gun and demanding to talk to me.”

Joelle tried to come up with a logical reason for that demand, but she couldn’t think of one.

Unless Rudy thought that the evidence would incriminate him.

“Maybe the standoff is a ruse so Rudy can destroy any evidence that might be in the secret safe,” Joelle offered. “And he’s adding to that ruse by demanding to see you.”

Dallas paused as if considering that. “The safe is still locked. The CSIs couldn’t get it open, and there’s no indication that it’s been opened or tampered with in years. Besides, Clayton has Rudy in his sights.”

Since she’d read the background reports on all of Dallas’s foster brothers, she knew that Clayton had sniper training. “Clayton’s armed with a rifle?”

“Yeah. And if necessary, he’ll take Rudy out.”

Oh, God. Not another death. Joelle wasn’t especially fond of Rudy, but he was a human being and besides, he might be able to clear up who killed Webb.

Rudy might even confess to doing the deed himself.

That would solve some of their problems and would stop Dallas or Kirby from going to jail. Not her, though. She would still have to face charges of suppressing information about the knife. But a confession would be a huge start.

And then maybe Dallas and she could deal with everything else.

“I’m sorry,” Joelle whispered.

At first she wasn’t sure Dallas had even heard her, but when he tossed her a glance, she realized he had. Joelle figured that meant he wasn’t ready to talk about it. Maybe never would be. But she had to try.

“I’m trying to make myself remember that you were a kid yourself,” he said before she could say anything else.

Joelle held her breath. Waiting. But he didn’t say anything else for several long moments.

“I can’t put all of this on you,” Dallas added.

No. This was not where she wanted this guilt trip to go. “And I don’t want you to put it on Kirby, either. He loved you and wanted the best for you. Plus my new foster parents were telling me the same thing I was thinking—that if you knew about the pregnancy, it would ruin your life.”

“But they didn’t seem to mind that it’d ruin yours. Did they happen to mention that when they were advising you?”

The pain cut even deeper. It was so hard going back to that time and place. All those memories. Some precious. Some horrible. She’d been ill equipped to deal with everything she was feeling and had managed to push some of it deep inside.

It was all coming back. And Joelle had to wonder how she could cope with it all over again.

“My foster parents wanted me to put the baby up for adoption,” she said when she could gather her breath. “I, uh, said no, and eventually they agreed that I could stay with them, and they’d help me raise the baby.” That required another pause. “Then, of course, Amber didn’t make it.”

More silence. His jaw muscles stirred, and he kept his focus straight ahead when he turned onto Rocky Creek Road.

“I’m sorry for everything you went through, but you should have told me,” Dallas finally said, and his inflection let her know that he’d just closed the subject.

No forgiveness.

Not for her. And not for Kirby.

She hated that she’d put this wedge between them, but once this case was finished and she was out of Dallas’s life, Joelle figured Kirby could mend things. If the cancer didn’t take him first, that is.

Ahead, she saw the Rocky Creek facility, and even though the sun was setting, there was just enough light left for her to see the people milling around. Some CSIs in their uniforms. A couple of locals, too. Clayton was there, literally on top of a truck, and he had a rifle pointed at the building.

“Hell,” Dallas mumbled.

Like her, he probably didn’t want to deal with anything that involved rifles and standoffs, but apparently they had no choice.

When Dallas’s truck got closer, she saw the makeshift roadblock that had been set up with traffic cones. Sarah was standing next to one of the cones, her attention on whatever was happening inside.

Dallas stopped the truck, and they both got out.

“Rudy’s gone crazy,” Sarah informed them immediately. “He’s locked himself inside and won’t come out.”

Dallas looked past her at the man who was walking up the road from the building. He made a beeline for them.

“I’m Sheriff Bruce Shelton,” the lanky man greeted. He took a badge from his pocket, flashed it. He looked more cowboy than cop with his jeans, boots and Stetson, and he was wearing a gun in an old-fashioned hip holster.

“Dallas Walker,” he greeted back, and Joelle noted that he hadn’t included his title of marshal. Probably because he no longer had a badge. “And this is Joelle Tate from the governor’s office.”

“This way.” The sheriff motioned for them to follow him. When Sarah started to go with them, he shook his head. “Already told you to stay put. If you don’t, you’ll be the one facing charges.”

“But Rudy’s threatening to burn down the building,” Sarah protested. “I can’t let him do that. The place is part of my home. He has no right to even be inside.”

“We’ll deal with him,” Sheriff Shelton answered, and he kept walking.

Thankfully, Sarah stayed put, but she did continue to call out for them to stop Rudy.

“We have phone contact with Rudy,” the sheriff explained to them. “And your brother volunteered to cover the shot if it came down to it.”

Cover the shot. A sterile term for sniper duty. Of course, from everything she remembered about him, Clayton had a level head, and he wouldn’t shoot Rudy unless there was no other choice.

“Has Rudy destroyed any evidence?” Joelle asked.

“Not that we can tell. So far he’s stayed right in the entry near the stairs.”

Well, that was something at least, but it didn’t mean Rudy wouldn’t follow through on his threat to burn the place down.

When they approached the truck where Clayton was positioned, one of the men, a deputy, handed the sheriff a cell phone.

“Rudy, Marshal Walker just arrived,” the sheriff explained. “Miss Tate, too. Now say your peace to them like you said you wanted, and then let’s end this.”

“Dallas?” Rudy immediately said.

“I’m here.” Dallas moved closer to the phone. “Why’d you call me out here?”

“Because this is a setup.” Rudy’s words were slurred. “And I’m not going to jail for something I didn’t do.”

Dallas glanced around, probably to see if anyone knew what Rudy meant by that, but the sheriff, deputies and others just shook their heads.

“Rudy, what the hell are you talking about?” Dallas demanded.

“The so-called evidence these city boys are finding. Webb’s blood,” he clarified in a mocking tone. “Well, it was planted there, I tell you, and it was planted to set me up.”

Great. The man had either lost it or had been misinformed.

“The CSIs are collecting evidence, Rudy,” Dallas assured him. “They weren’t there to frame you. We only want to know the truth about what happened to Webb.”

“The truth?” he howled. Joelle looked inside and saw that Rudy was pacing. Clearly agitated. And maybe even drunk because he wasn’t too steady on his feet. “You want the truth, you should be asking Sarah a thing or two.”

“I heard that!” Sarah shouted. “Don’t listen to that drunk fool. He’s lied so much he doesn’t know how to tell the truth anymore.”

“Sarah’s the one who told me this was a setup,” Rudy continued as if he hadn’t heard her, and he probably hadn’t. Sarah wasn’t yards away from the cell phone that was on speaker. “She’s a resourceful woman, and she knows how to set up a man like me to take the blame for something she did.”

“What do you mean by resourceful?” Dallas pressed Rudy.

Rudy cursed, shook his head and stumbled again. “I mean she coulda created them spots of blood on the window to make it look like I killed her husband.”

“Did you kill him?” Joelle came right out and asked.

“No.” Rudy made a groaning sound. “Jonah was my friend. And if you’re looking for a killer, look at Sarah.”

Dallas huffed. “How could Sarah have gotten Webb’s blood to plant anywhere to set you up? The guy’s been dead for sixteen years.”

“She probably saved the cleaning rags she used to wipe up his blood. Saved them and then used them today so these city boys would find it.”

“Listen to yourself,” Dallas continued. “One minute you say that Sarah warned you this was a setup, and now you’re saying she’s the one who tampered with evidence.”

“Because that’s what she said!” Rudy stopped, cursed some more and held on to the wall, probably to stop himself from falling. “She did this. She riled me up. Confused me.”

“Or maybe you misunderstood,” Joelle offered. She glanced back at Sarah, and for just a split second, she thought the woman had a smug look. But maybe it was the twilight playing tricks on her eyes.

“Didn’t misunderstand her,” Rudy snarled. “Who do you think really ran this place all these years? Not Jonah, that’s for sure. Nothing went on around here without Sarah knowing about it. And there wasn’t one kid who took a beatin’ without Sarah making sure it happened.”

That sent an uneasy feeling through Joelle. She’d never liked Sarah, had always thought of her as a shadow of a woman. Had she been wrong? Of course, even if Sarah had pressed for the abuse, it’d still been Webb who’d carried it out.

“It’s like what went on with that knife,” Rudy continued, yanking Joelle’s attention back to him.

“What knife?” Dallas asked. He met Joelle’s gaze, and she could see the concern in his eyes.

“My knife. The one I always used for skinnin’ snakes. She took it when I was out doing some yard work. Took it from my truck, and she brought it to Jonah and fibbed. Said she found it on Declan.”

This was the first Joelle was hearing about any of this, and there was no mention of it in any of the notes she read, but Dallas made a slight sound as if recalling something. “Webb brought Declan and me into his office one afternoon and showed us the knife.” He looked at Joelle. “I forgot all about that until now.”

“That’s right. He showed you, and you picked it up. Looked at it real good and said you’d never seen it before. Declan didn’t touch it but he said the same. Jonah told me all about it. Then, he said Sarah took the knife and put it away somewhere.”

Oh, God. Had that really happened? Or was this the ranting of a drunk man who might be trying to cover his own guilt? After all, the knife very well might have been Rudy’s.

“Rudy’s making it sound like I did something wrong,” Sarah shouted. “I didn’t steal the knife from his truck. I found it in the boys’ bathroom and took the knife to Jonah. After he showed it to some of the boys, I put it in Jonah’s desk drawer just like he told me to do. I told Jonah it might be Rudy’s, and he said he’d ask him about it later.”

The sheriff motioned for Sarah to stay quiet. “Keep talking,” he instructed Rudy.

“Jonah didn’t know the knife was mine,” Rudy went on. “When he described it and I told him it was, he looked for it but said Sarah must have taken it. I think Sarah used that knife to kill Jonah, and if she did, Marshal, she’ll try to pin his killin’ on me or you. Me because it was my knife and you because your prints were on it.”

Dallas’s gaze met Joelle’s, and she saw the questions in his eyes. Of course, Rudy’s accusations didn’t address their number-one suspect.

“Did Owen have access to that knife?” Joelle asked.

“Owen?” she heard Rudy question, and he shook his head. “I doubt it. Well, unless Sarah gave it to him.”

“I didn’t,” she called out. “I put in the drawer, and I don’t know why it wasn’t there when Jonah looked for it.”

Maybe because someone had taken it.

Someone like Owen.

Of course, Sarah could have taken it, too.

Dallas looked back at her as if thinking the same thing. “I swear to you,” he said to the woman, “that I’ll get to the bottom of this. I won’t stop until I find the killer.”

If he’d meant it as a warning, it worked. In fact, it sounded more like a guaranteed threat. It certainly hushed Rudy and had Sarah looking a little uncomfortable.

“This knife isn’t important,” Sarah responded after several moments. “All this stuff Rudy is spouting about happened months before Jonah was killed,” Sarah added. “It doesn’t make sense that I’d hide a knife all that time.”

It would if Sarah intended to keep it for protection against an abusive man. But that didn’t rule out someone else doing the same thing.

Joelle wanted to ask Sarah if Owen or anyone else had access to that drawer. Of course, if Owen had taken it, that meant he’d kept it hidden away after all these years. That was a long time to withhold evidence.

Unless he used it to murder Webb.

If Owen had known about Dallas’s prints being on the knife, then he could have kept it simply to pin the blame on Dallas. But then that meant whoever the real killer was had used gloves so that only Dallas’s prints would be there.

Could Owen have thought to take those kind of precautions when he was only seventeen years old?

Maybe.

And if he had, it meant Webb’s murder hadn’t happened in the heat of the moment. It was premeditated.

Yes, she definitely had to ask Sarah some questions, including ones about that safe. Had she even known about it? And did she have any idea what was inside it?

Joelle turned to do just that, but she only made it a few steps toward Sarah before Dallas and the sheriff cursed. She whirled back around and saw that Rudy was no longer in the entry. He’d dropped his gun and was running up the stairs.

“Don’t shoot him,” the sheriff called out to Clayton. “He’s not armed.”

But that didn’t meant he wasn’t dangerous. “Webb’s office,” Joelle said on a rise of breath. “He might try to set it on fire.”

Dallas, Clayton and the others started running. “Make sure the back of the building is secured,” Dallas shouted, and Clayton headed that way.

Joelle ran after them, cursing her heels, which were only slowing her down. Dallas made it to the front of the building first, and with his gun drawn, he threw open the door and raced toward the stairs. She saw Rudy’s gun on the floor where he’d discarded it, but she prayed he didn’t have another weapon on him. Joelle didn’t want this to turn into a shootout with Dallas caught in the middle.

The sheriff retrieved Rudy’s gun, stuck it in his pocket and barreled up the stairs behind Dallas. “Wait here,” he insisted.

Joelle didn’t want to wait. She wanted to stop Rudy from hurting Dallas and destroying evidence, but since she wasn’t armed and probably wouldn’t be able to restrain Rudy, she did as the sheriff said and stayed put.

The seconds crawled, and she looked around to see if Sarah had followed them, but the woman was nowhere in sight. Later, Joelle would need to find her and ask her about Owen’s possible access to the knife.

“Rudy went down the laundry chute,” she heard Dallas shout.

Joelle remembered exactly where that was, and it wasn’t anywhere near Webb’s office. Maybe Rudy hadn’t planned to set it on fire after all, but she didn’t breathe easier yet because Dallas was still up there, and Rudy was clearly trying to escape.

And that’s when she remembered that the chute emptied into the basement. Basements were a rarity in Texas, but Rocky Creek had one that was used as a laundry and storage area.

She also remembered something else.

“There are basement access doors on the ends of the building,” she called out to the Dallas and the others who were upstairs. She immediately heard someone headed back down the hall toward the stairs.

Joelle hurried to the front door and looked out. Still no sign of Sarah, but it didn’t take long for her to spot some movement.

Rudy.

He must have cut the lock on the east side of the building because he staggered out into the near darkness and headed toward the thick woods that led to the creek. And his trailer.

“Rudy’s getting away!” she yelled, and it didn’t take long for Dallas to appear on the stairs.

He practically jumped down the steps and raced outside. “Which way did he go?”

Joelle pointed in the direction where she’d last seen him just as the sound cracked through the air. Her heart dropped. Because she knew that sound.

A gunshot.

Oh, God. Was someone shooting at them?

She couldn’t tell if the bullet had hit anything, but it had seemed to her that it’d been fired close by. Of course, miles was too close as far as she was concerned.

“Get inside,” Dallas ordered.

Joelle stepped back into the entry, but Dallas didn’t do the same. Using the building for cover, he went outside. So did the sheriff, and one of the deputies leaned out from the door and fanned a bright flashlight into the woods. She didn’t see Rudy, but the deputy and others inched closer toward the trees.

Joelle peeked out, praying that there wouldn’t be another shot and that no one was hurt. But that thought had no sooner crossed her mind when she heard someone shout.

Rudy.

“I’ve been hit,” he yelled. “Someone’s trying to kill me.”

That put her heart in her throat. She wasn’t fond of the man, but she didn’t want him dead.

But someone did.

Who?

And why?

Joelle glanced around, looking for Sarah. Or God forbid, even Owen, but she didn’t see anyone, only Dallas and other law enforcement.

The deputy’s flashlight slashed over the dark woods, and he came to an abrupt stop when the light caught the movement. All of the lawmen aimed their weapons in the direction.

“Stop!” Dallas called out. “And put your hands in the air.”

Joelle held her breath, hoping that Rudy would do just that so the standoff would end. But then she heard Dallas curse.

“What the hell?” he mumbled.

Joelle leaned out even farther so she could see what had prompted that response and the puzzled mumblings of the other lawmen. Thanks to the spray of light, she saw that the person in the woods had indeed done as Dallas had ordered.

But it wasn’t Rudy.

It was a woman.

With her hands lifted in the air, the woman turned toward them. Joelle couldn’t see if she was armed, but she did get a good look at the woman’s face.

Lindsey.

What the devil was she doing at Rocky Creek, and why had she shot Rudy?