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The cobwebs wouldn’t do, not over her baby’s head where they might flutter down in the night and land on her nose...she might breathe them in. Tessa scowled. And she didn’t care how that sounded.
She grabbed the broom and stood in the corner, swinging it up and uttering a few choice words. She was still too short to reach the peaked ceiling without a ladder, which she didn’t have, and which she wasn’t going to ask that overgrown behemoth in cabin three for.
Her eyes lit on the two chairs and small table just this side of the large island separating living room and kitchen, three stools tucked neatly beneath the lip. The chairs would give her a couple of feet, and she only needed one.
Tessa bit her lip in indecision, trying to talk herself out of something foolhardy and dangerous. She reasoned that had flown out the window when she’d hooked up with an idiot like Cady Burrows. And those gray gossamer strands of filth were coming down. Before she could entertain any further thoughts about the wisdom of doing what she was thinking, she grabbed the chair and dragged it backwards, rearranging it directly beneath the dangling threads. She imagined its creator, its beady black eyes glaring at her from its place in the room's corner. She grabbed the broom and the back of the chair, bracing herself, and climbed up. The chair gave a tiny wobble, and she froze until she was sure she had her balance. She straightened, lifting the broom and brushing the dangling threads, removing the offending remnants. She gave a grunt of satisfaction, and brought the broom down, ready to call it a day. And then she saw the little cloudy wisp she’d missed. It just wouldn’t do.
Once more she reached up, frowning when the broom brushed over but didn’t catch it. It was just beyond reach. She stretched, moving onto her tippy-toes, and farther out on the edge of the chair, taking a swipe with the very end of the broom. Her added weight, combined with the lunging motion was more than the chair could take, tipping it up on two feet, and sending it over so fast that Tessa had just enough time to let out a scream as she came down, narrowly missing whacking her head good on the edge of the chair as it shot out of the way. The force of the landing sent a searing pain winging through her from her groin straight through the center of her belly. She screamed a second time, in pain, sure she’d felt something tear.
Immediately, tears sprang to her eyes as she tried to catch her breath. The pain continued unabated and Tessa took a sobbing breath, trying to move, to get up, and reach her phone on the stand by the fireplace. Spots swam in front of her eyes, and for a moment, she was sure she was going to pass out from the movement. She lay back, her hands cupping her stomach, and prayed.
#
ELLE WAS FINISHING up laundry in her little stackable washer and dryer when Mia suddenly sat up in her doggy bed in front of the fire and growled, looking madly around. “Hey there, girl. Having a dream?” Elle soothed.
Mia looked at her mournfully, her ears pricked, her nose quivering as she sniffed the air. Instead of lying back down, she stood, twisting her head towards the front door. Abruptly, she began a frenzied barking. She ran to the door and started scratching to get out.
Elle tossed the last shirt aside and frowned, considering. But Mia wasn’t one to make a fuss over nothing. Just in case, Elle grabbed her gun and tucked it into the small of her back, patting her back pocket to make sure her phone was there before grabbing her jacket off the hook.
She opened the door and Mia was through it like a shot and down off the porch, running towards Tessa’s cabin. It was all the incentive Elle needed to follow, dread pooling in her stomach.
She caught up with Mia on the porch, scratching frantically. From the other side of the door, she heard a soft cry of pain. She tried the door, cursing the fact that they’d installed dead bolts from the inside. Even if she had a key, it wouldn’t do any good. “Can you unlock the door?” she screamed, stepping sideways and cupping her fingers to the side of her eyes, trying to see inside. She couldn’t see beyond the kitchen island.
A muffled voice came back, thready and filled with fear. “I can’t move.”
Elle’s eyes fell on August’s cabin, just a couple more down. “I’ll be right back,” she shouted. There was no answer.
She was down the steps in two and running, covering the distance in a matter of seconds, and pounding loudly on his door. He opened it almost immediately, blinking at her blearily as if she’d woken him from a nap. He took one look at her face and ran a hand through his wiry curls, his eyes widening. “What’s wrong?”
“Tessa, something has happened. She can’t unlock the door from the inside, and...do you have an ax or something...”
She didn’t get to finish the sentence as he brushed past her. He covered the distance in a lick, trying the handle and stepping back as she arrived at the top of the steps.
“How are you going to get it open without a pry bar?” Elle gasped when he raised his foot, nearly as impressive as his hands, and hit the door dead center. Old wood and rusting hinges were no match for August Hermes’ size thirteens. The deadbolt on the other side put up a token resistance, clinging to the frame it was bolted to and requiring a second kick to send the door swinging around into the wall with a crash.
Through the door, Tessa lay on her side in a corner of the living room, tears streaming along her cheeks. “Stupid me...idiotic,” she moaned, grabbing her sides. August reached out, ignoring her hands that batted at him, startled. He felt the hard mound of her belly, giving a relieved gasp when the baby immediately kicked his palm dead center. His hands moved around to her sides, checking for injuries.
Elle took in the fallen chair and broom, her mouth tightening as she put the pieces together. “Where does it hurt, Tessa?”
“In all the wrong places. My back, my stomach, groin...” She finished lamely. She gave an anguished sob. “And I think I’m bleeding.”
Elle glanced at August. “I’m going to go get the car. Think you can handle getting her bundled up and into the back seat?”
August nodded grimly. “I’m right behind you.”
#
ON THE WAY TO THE EMERGENCY room, Elle had to force herself to slow down on the icy roads. Ending up in a ditch wouldn’t help anyone. August had crowded into the back with Tessa, who wasn’t happy about all the fuss. Well, too bad. Uncomfortable things happened to pregnant idiots who climbed on chairs when they shouldn’t. She was just going to have to deal with it.
They pulled up to the emergency room doors and August ignored the wheelchair when she gave a gasping moan and clutched her abdomen. He ran around to the opposite door and opened it, scooping her out before she could muster up the swear words to tell him exactly what she thought of his high-handedness. Inside he bellowed, getting everyone in the lobby’s undivided attention, including the little girl of about ten who looked like she had a pretty wicked cut, her mother holding a washrag around the offending digit. She took one look at August, and began to cry, eliciting a severe frown aimed in August’s direction from her mother.
Several nurses came running, and in no time they had her loaded into a wheelchair as Elle explained what had happened. At the double doors both nurses turned and stopped them, trying not to stare at August, who filled the hallway, and looked like some kind of deranged serial killer. The older nurse cleared her throat and spoke. “Just one. You both brought her in. Normally, I’d allow relatives or husbands only. She gave August’s impressive hands a dark look, searching for the ring. “But you aren’t the husband, right?” She turned to Elle. “And I’m assuming you’re a friend, who is coming to speak for the patient while we examine her to explain what happened?”
August didn’t look thrilled at being left out, his ominous scowl leaving little doubt. With a sigh, he turned to Elle. “Go then, we’re wasting time. I’ll wait in the waiting room.”
Elle nodded. “While you’re there, maybe you can apologize to the little girl you scared half to death on the way in.” August growled, mumbling beneath his breath as the double doors closed in his face.
A half hour later, Elle joined August in the waiting room. “They have all the information. They are still looking her over, running a few tests. She was bleeding a little—they’re checking it for amniotic fluid, to see if she ruptured the placenta.”
August blinked in embarrassment. “Um, okay. Is she in labor?”
Elle shrugged awkwardly. “I’m not sure. What do you think just because I’m a woman I know all about these things?” she snapped.
“So, then we wait,” he finished, sitting back in the little office chair that groaned beneath his weight.
“Just so,” Elle muttered, sitting across from him and leaning her elbows on her knees, her chin atop her fists.
It was another hour before a harried-looking doctor came into the waiting room, looked around, and called their names.
Elle read the name badge. “Dr. Keith?”
He gave a tired smile. “Well, she’s stable. Ms. Tessa took a rather nasty fall, but she’s tough. Baby appears fine, and the bleeding has stopped for now. She tells me she isn’t sure when she’s actually due?”
He barely contained his disapproval, glaring at August as if he were solely responsible for the oversight.
August actually stuttered, trying to figure out how to respond. Elle would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so grave. “It’s a long story, Doc. August is not the father.”
“I see. Well, someone is going to have to take responsibility for her well-being in the next few weeks.” His brows rose in question.
“What do we need to do?” August bravely asked, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously.
“The bleeding may be a sign of a small rupture in the placenta, so she will require monitoring by a doctor carefully over the next few weeks. That’s all I suspect she has left before delivery. For the next week at least, I recommend complete bed rest. After, if there are no further complications, and the baby continues to be active, I see no reason she cannot resume some light activities that don’t include standing on chairs to swat at spiders.”
August’s mouth fell open comically. “She did what? I’m going to kill her,” he snapped.
“Is that a threat?” the doctor asked, deadpan.
August’s mouth moved, but nothing came out. The stern-faced doctor gave him a ghost of a smile. “It’s not uncommon for young mothers to go through what we call a nesting phase in the last weeks. Animals commence finding and preparing a place to give birth. Humans aren’t so different. I’ve seen some of the biggest slobs suddenly decide they need to clean the house from top to bottom. Still, just make sure she doesn’t do anything foolish like that again, okay?”
“Guarantee it,” Elle groused.
“And set her up with an ob-gyn asap so she can be monitored further, and a due date and late term prenatal plan can be established. I wrote down a couple of good ones that are local here in town.” His expression suddenly darkened, becoming speculative. He hesitated, holding out the slip of paper to Elle. His voice dropped as he pointed to the second name on the list. “This one, Liz Monroe. She’s known for being...discreet.”
Elle met his eyes and gave a brief nod of understanding.
Keeping Tessa’s presence in Veil Falls secret was critical.
#
“ARE ALL OF THOSE NECESSARY?” Dylan asked, eying the pile of chili peppers the old man was chopping expertly on the old wooden cutting board, so old it was slightly bowed in the middle and dark with the patina of old oil.
Penny glanced up and grinned. “I’ve heard it puts hair on your chest.” He waved the sharp paring knife with a blue gloved hand in his direction for emphasis.
Dylan grinned and went back to chopping tomatoes and garlic. He was having fun for the first time in a long while, he realized with a pang. Military life hadn’t exactly been a laugh a minute.
“When you get done there, you can sauté everything while I start in on the cornbread. Gotta have that to go with, and more onions and cheese for topping.”
“I thought we were making your grandmother’s famous hair-raising chili, not a heart attack in a bowl.”
He shrugged and grabbed a handful of chopped peppers and added them to the pan, the oil just beginning to sizzle and pop. “Yeah, well, I may have improvised over the years a bit. You’ll just have to trust me. But no begging for the recipe. It’s an old family secret.”
“So you’ve told me. More than once.”
“Hey, I’m willing to tell you the secret to its perfection.”
Dylan looked up in question. “Let me guess. The right beer, and plenty of it?”
Penny laughed sharply. “That’s right.”
Dylan shook his head and grinned, grabbing the wooden spoon and giving the pan a stir.
Both men leaned back in their chairs with a groan. “Aside from the heartburn that’s sure to keep me up half the night, that was amazing.”
Dylan’s expression turned whimsical. “It’s one of Danny’s favorite dishes. He loves to crumble his cornbread on top and add sour cream.”
Penny sobered, looking thoughtful. “You’ll find him if anyone can.”
“I wish I had your confidence.”
Dylan didn’t miss the look of uncertainty the old man tried to conceal. Like Dylan, he wondered if the time to rescue him had already come and gone.
“You know, maybe you’re looking at it wrong, just saying.”
Dylan speared him with a look. “How do you mean? I’ve been looking into this militia he somehow got mixed up in that has the entire town in an uproar and scared half to death.”
“Just so. And you’ve been stirring up that hornet’s nest, asking all sorts of questions about the guys that are part of it, trying to figure out what they’re about. All good stuff.”
“But...” Dylan sensed he had more on his mind.
“Maybe you should follow the girl.”
“The waitress? Were they that serious, then?” He’d never known Danny to be interested in a girl for long before moving on to something or someone else.
“I think they were working that way, yes. Lot of people, good and bad, they ignore the old man. They think I don’t remember what it was like to be sweet on a girl like that, and that I don’t pay attention to what’s going on around me. It’s my secret weapon.”
Dylan’s lips curved at that.
Penny continued. “That girl and her sister, they were in a world of trouble, you know. Cady controlled the older sister, kept her under surveillance and controlled her every move. And he considered it his place to discourage any interest in the male persuasion of CeCe as well.”
“She was nineteen, wasn’t she? And Cady didn’t have any actual relationship with her, right? He wasn’t her father.”
“No. Cady is white. Tessa and CeCe are both mixed. He was no relation to either of them.” There was an odd look on Penny’s face.
“Are you saying he was openly pursuing the younger sister as well?”
Penny didn’t smile. “Guys like Cady don’t observe any boundaries between right and wrong.”
“Surely Tessa wasn’t okay with that, or wait—was she even aware?”
“You assume she was with Cady willingly. She was trapped. He got her fired from the restaurant, forced her to move in with him when she couldn’t pay the rent, and she had no car or money, and he had his men monitor her every move. Tessa did what she could to protect her sister, but Cady could be brutal when he was thwarted, and she had the baby to think about. Wouldn’t surprise me if she was plotting her way out and just ran out of time. Who knows? Like Danny, I haven’t seen hide nor hair of either of them in several weeks.”
“Say I was to look a little closer into their disappearance, hoping it might lead me to my brother, where would you suggest I start?”
“With that stubborn woman that runs the restaurant, Deb. Good luck, though. Being afraid for her life and that of her own daughter has made her real close-mouthed about what’s going on in this town. Can’t say that I blame her.”
Dylan insisted on cleaning up. Penny put up a token protest, but in the end retired to his rocker in the living room, bringing up a news channel and grumbling to himself periodically as he watched it. When he was done, Dylan warmed a cup of coffee for each of them in the microwave and joined him. Penny scrolled through channels until they came upon an action movie, and they settled in companionable silence to watch it. A quarter of the way through it, Dylan looked over to find Penny reclined back in his chair, a lap blanket dangling off his lap and onto the floor, and his mouth wide open as he snored. It made Dylan smile. He shut the movie off, added a log to the fireplace and stirred the coals, and took the cups into the kitchen and rinsed them, leaving them on the drainboard for later.
He checked the doors and windows, making sure everything was locked up tight, an old habit he couldn’t shake. In the living room, he jostled Penny until he roused, blinking blearily up at him. Snapping his mouth shut, he sat up, getting gingerly to his feet and tossing the blanket over the back of the chair.
He had just turned towards the bedroom when a sound out in front of the house caught Dylan’s attention. A motor revved at the far end of the block suddenly and picked up speed. Dylan frowned in confusion. The first pop sounded like the backfiring of a faulty exhaust. Dylan knew better. He dove for Penny, knocking him sideways off his feet and to the floor with a cry as the kitchen windows shattered. Several more shots followed the first, peppering the door frame, several making it through and embedding themselves in the wall. Tufts of stuffing from the chair Penny had occupied seconds before exploded into the air. Any earlier and it would have been the old man taking those shots, and him, too. He looked at where he’d been sitting. It had fared no better.
On the floor, covering the old man, Dylan pulled his service revolver and stayed down until he heard the engine reach the end of the street and the squeal of rubber as the vehicle spun around the corner and was gone. He kept them down for several more seconds just to be sure. “Are you all right?”
“Hell no, I ain’t. Bastards just shot up my house! But if you mean, was I hit? No. Thanks to you.”
Dylan’s mouth was a flat line as he reached down and helped Penny to his feet. “Stay put. I’m going to check things out and make sure they didn’t just go and park somewhere so they could circle back.”
“That’s fine, but they’re gone. They just shot up the entire neighborhood. You can bet it will bring the sheriff, Dale Sacket, and his two Barney Fife deputies to check things out.”
“Good. Maybe they can help us figure out who is responsible.”
Penny laughed outright at that as Dylan checked the door to make sure it still held. Several vases and a picture frame had fallen and shattered on the floor. There’d be a fair amount of cleaning up to do. And the holes would need patching when the cops were done processing the scene. “I said they’d show up, not that they would actually do anything. Oh, they’ll make all the right noises, blame it on a bunch of teenage gang wannabes trying to make a statement to some rival gang. Well, this is little Glad Corners—we don’t have any gangs unless you count that band of reprobates that have taken over, and those cops are thick as thieves with the militia. They’re just another part of the payroll.”
#
DALE SACKETT AND HIS deputies were everything Penny Myers said they were and more. “Did you see them? Are you sure they were aiming for your house, Penny? Or were they just looking to shoot up the neighborhood? Maybe as part of some initiation ceremony.”
“Did you miss all the holes, Sheriff? They aren’t hard to see. They had a purpose all right, and we were it.”
Dale nodded, his eyes never leaving Dylan as he spoke. “Speaking of which, you may be right. But perhaps they weren’t after you at all.” He turned to Dylan. “You’re new in town, right? Do you have a name?”
Dylan handed him his identification. He took it between thumb and forefinger and looked it over. “Dylan Potter. Any relation to a Danny Potter, the nosy-assed reporter we had hanging about for a while?”
Dylan’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t rise to the bait. “Danny is my brother. Do you know him?”
The sheriff sniffed as if he’d smelled something foul. “I had a few run-ins with him. Ran his mouth a bit too much for my liking and was hanging with the wrong crowd.”
Dale turned to Penny. “Maybe they weren’t after you, but something you had in the house. Why don’t me and the boys just look around, see if we can find anything they might have been interested in?”
He took a step farther into the room, his left foot on the bottom step of the stairs leading up. “But then you’d need a warrant to do that, wouldn’t you, Sheriff?” Dylan asked coldly. Dale Sackett was a joke.
The sheriff turned back, his eyes narrowed. “Would I need one here if I had the owner’s permission?” he asked with a suggestive gleam in his eye, turning an intimidating glare on the old man.
Penny drew himself up and stared back without blinking. “You would, Dale Sackett. You take one more step and I’m getting my shotgun and peppering your ass straight off my lawn. Do your job. Figure out who shot my place up with me in it—and it wasn’t no bunch of kids that did it.”
“Is that a threat, Penny Myers? You’d best watch yourself and who you keep company with before I decide to take you in for obstruction of justice.”
Penny snorted. “A fine use of the taxpayer’s money, I’m sure. And who I throw down with is no business of yours. I’d worry more about yourself, Dale. Rabid dogs have a way of biting the hand that feeds them.”
The sheriff’s eyes grew shuttered. The other two deputies approached. “We were able to retrieve a few shell casings from the street, and a couple of spent slugs. Pretty bad shape, though. Neighbors saw and heard nothing. If there’s nothing else, we’re done here.” The deputy eyed Dylan hard, memorizing him.
Dale Sacket’s eyes gleamed. He held the clear bag up to the firelight, the gleam of metal dull inside. “Yup. We’ll get these examined. Don’t expect the results soon, though, if I were you. You’re free to hit your insurance up for the damage if you dare. I wonder what they have about drive-by shootings in their policy? And as for you, Mr. Potter, seems staying with Mr. Myers isn’t all that good for his health. Maybe it would be best for him and everyone else around you if you did what you were told and moved on out of Glad Corners.”
Dylan shrugged, unblinking, not trusting himself to speak.
The two deputies and Dale Sackett turned abruptly and left, the door rattling on its hinges, several shards of glass breaking free and hitting the floor where the bullet had shattered the pane.
Dylan stared after them. Out front, they heard the vehicles start up and back down the drive. “I wonder...” Dylan speculated.
“What’s that?” Penny asked.
“How did they know I was staying here with you in the first place?”