Hayes’s cabin became headquarters for all the law enforcement personnel and emergency responders who arrived on the scene within minutes.
He had carried Emory in his arms the remaining distance and deposited her in one of the olive-green chairs at the dining table. He brought a quilt from the bed and draped it around her. “That’ll help until the ambulance gets here. They’ll have a Mylar blanket.”
“I only want you.” Emory grasped his hand.
He knelt beside her and threaded his fingers through her hair. “What the hell were you doing on that road on foot?”
“Running to warn you.”
He dragged his thumb across her lower lip. “Don’t do it again,” he said huskily.
“Don’t ever make yourself so large a target.”
“Not much I can do about that, Doc.”
They were still staring into each other’s eyes when Jack Connell approached. “Hanging in there?”
Tremulous and tearful, Emory said, “We’re alive.”
“No small miracle,” Connell said. “Knight, Grange, and I came upon your crashed car. My crashed car.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
He made a motion of dismissal. “You weren’t injured in the crash?”
“Nothing serious. But Alice…” Speaking the name caused her voice to crack. “She struck me. Maybe with the butt of the pistol. I’ll need another brain scan.”
“Ambulance should be here in a couple more minutes.” He shuffled his feet and divided an uneasy look between her and Hayes. Hayes, getting the message, mumbled that he’d see if there was anything he could do outside and left through the open door. She was reluctant to let him go but didn’t call him back, intuiting what Jack Connell was about to say.
“Emory, your husband is dead.”
She nodded. “She alluded to it. How?”
“Gunshot. Probably with the same pistol she was going to use on you.”
“Was it Jeff’s pistol?”
“No. One registered to him was found in an inside pocket of his jacket.”
“So she wasn’t lying about that. She told me he had a pistol.”
“He didn’t get to implement his plan, whatever it was, and I guess we’ll never know. He was killed inside the suite. Somehow Alice Butler got out without the deputy seeing her. Maybe the same way you and Hayes split the other night through the adjoining suite.”
He explained that after discovering Jeff’s body, he, Knight, and Grange had left the deputy there to guard the crime scene. “We were afraid for your safety and went looking for you at the motel. When I saw that my car was gone, we figured there was only one place you’d go.”
“My phone must have died before you got that part of the message. I told you I was on my way up here to warn Hayes.” She was watching him through the open doorway. His back was to her. He was talking to Buddy Grange and Sam Knight. “Alice knew.”
“She got here quick. She must’ve come upon the wrecked car and realized you’d set out on foot. She continued driving till she spotted you on the road, then—”
“Came up behind me, like before.”
“Before?”
She related Alice’s confession.
“So it wasn’t Jeff after all,” Jack said.
“Not directly. They both deceived me, and Alice told me he wasn’t all that bereaved when he thought I was dead. I believe that.”
“Hate to say it, but so do I.”
Hayes came through the door and rejoined them. “Ambulance driver is turning around so he can back in.”
Connell said to Emory, “I’ll pass along to Knight and Grange that Alice confessed.” He left them to go outside.
Hayes sat down on his haunches in front of her and took her cold hands between his. “Knight told me about Jeff. You okay?”
“It’ll take some time.”
“You have time.”
Absently she nodded. After a moment, she asked, “What happened at the Floyds’ house?”
“Norman and Will were on the lookout for me in front. Forgot to cover their back. They’re mean, but not too astute.”
“Lisa and Pauline?”
“Safe. I got there before the brothers carried out their wretched threat, which was probably an empty one. They wanted me, not Lisa.”
“Are they in custody?”
“They probably are by now. The mountain is crawling with cops of all varieties. I left Norman and Will easy to find, chained to the tree where they used to keep the dog.”
“Poetic justice.”
“I thought so.”
She touched the fresh bruises on his face.
He gave her a wry smile. “They didn’t go for the idea at first.”
Wanting to smile, needing to weep, she leaned forward and nestled her head against his neck. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close. She could feel his lips moving against her hair, but she didn’t catch the whispered words.
They stayed that way until two EMTs wheeled in a gurney.
Hayes tilted her head up and kissed her mouth, warmly and sweetly.
Then he stepped away and gave her over to the care of the EMTs, who insisted on strapping her to a board because of the head injury. As they wheeled her through the doorway and out into the yard, she caught sight of Sergeant Grange. She called his name, and he turned. He looked ashen, his shrewd eyes not as bright as usual.
She mouthed to him, Thank you. He acknowledged her gratitude with a quick nod, then cast his eyes down at the ground.
Looking for Hayes, she tried to move her head from side to side, but because of the constraint across her forehead, she couldn’t. When she didn’t see him, she struggled to raise her head, also to no avail. With mounting anxiety, she searched the yard as thoroughly as her peripheral vision would allow.
Finally she spotted Jack Connell. He was watching her, and in an instant she knew the cause of his bleak expression.
She ceased the struggle to raise her head. She wouldn’t find who she had been looking for. The tears that leaked from the corners of her eyes were also futile. That he had vanished should come as no surprise. He had told her he would, and he always did as he said.