JULIAN STARED AT THE COMPUTER screen. He might as well work, since he had nothing better to do, but he couldn’t get his mind on the story he should be writing. He was still hung up on Nell Rose and what had happened with her, who she really was, how fooled he’d been by her pretty, innocent face. “Be honest,” he muttered to himself. “It wasn’t her face that robbed you of all reason.”
When the phone rang, he nearly jumped out of his chair. Spotting Paul’s cell number on the caller ID, he answered with a brisk, “You owe me big-time.”
“You’ll have to explain that later.” Paul’s voice sounded tired, strained. “Is Nell Rose Collins still there?”
He shouldn’t be surprised that the call was about her. “No, she’s not.”
“Where is she?”
Julian told the sheriff where Nell Rose was staying, and then he asked, “Why? Did you find out that she’s the Knoxville nut-job?”
“Huh?” Paul sounded truly confused. Welcome to the club.
“The letters, my Number One Fan. How did you figure it out?”
“Sorry, you’ve lost me. The Birmingham police want me to pick her up. One of the lawyers at her firm was murdered, and she was the last person known to see him alive. She’s a, uh, person of interest.”
Which was Paul’s way of saying she was a suspect. He tried to imagine Nell Rose killing someone, anyone, and mixed up as she was—he couldn’t see it. She’d lie through her teeth, paint a false picture, maybe get a little obsessive, but murder? If she was capable of killing a man, then he was blinder than he’d thought. He told Paul as much.
“Well, Stu Grayson might beg to differ. He got a bullet to the head Friday afternoon, right before Nell Rose left town.”
A chill ran up Julian’s spine. “Stu Grayson called here a couple of hours ago.”
“Maybe in one of your books that could happen, but in real life there’s no way. Grayson’s body was found early this morning by a janitorial crew. He’s been dead since Friday.”
Julian closed his eyes, and the pieces fell into place. Nell Rose wasn’t the stalker; the caller was. Somehow the freak had been watching, all this time, and he’d come up with a plan to get Nell Rose out of the house using the words he’d written in his disturbing letters to condemn her. Julian couldn’t help but wonder—was he in danger? Or was she? How the hell had his stalker known Stu Grayson’s name?
“How far are you from the cabin where Nell Rose is staying?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Ten minutes for me. I’ll see you there. Hurry.”
He hung up in the middle of a confused question from the sheriff. There wasn’t time for explanations. If he was right, he’d all but handed Nell Rose over to an obsessed man who might be capable of anything.
NELL ROSE JUMPED OUT of her skin when someone knocked on the door. She tossed the paperback aside without marking her page. Obviously horror novels were not for her, written by Julian or not.
She walked to the door expecting to find a man about her car, or the woman who managed the cabins. It was a complete surprise to see Marcus Stillwell, a junior partner from the firm, standing there with a manila folder in his hands.
Nell Rose looked at him, then at the folder. “You have got to be kidding me,” she said. “You tracked me down for work?” She couldn’t imagine any sort of problem that someone else couldn’t handle until she got back.
Marcus was as much a workaholic as Stu. In fact, she’d passed him on Friday afternoon, rushing into the office as she was rushing out.
“I’m so sorry to bother you on your vacation,” he said. “Can I come in?”
“Sure.” Nell Rose backed up a few steps and opened the door wide. It would soon be dark, but at the moment the evening sun lit the remaining snow and the cabins down the hill. “You could’ve called.”
“I tried to call you on your cell, but I couldn’t get through.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said.
Marcus was one of those upwardly mobile young guys who dated a series of beautiful women. None of his relationships lasted very long. He always led people to believe that he was the one who ended the relationships, but Nell Rose suspected that wasn’t always the case. Even though he was blond and handsome—in a clean-cut, all-American way—and she had never seen him not dressed as if he’d stepped out of a magazine, he rarely looked a person in the eye, that she’d seen, and he was selfish. Everything was always about Marcus. His career, what he wanted, his schedule. Yes, he was the kind of man who would track down a woman on vacation to get what he wanted from her.
Figures.
But if she was going to concentrate on her career from here on out, and her vacation already sucked big-time, what difference did it make?
“What can I do?” she asked, reaching for the manila folder, taking it from him, opening it to look down at a small stack of blank paper. She leafed through, making sure she hadn’t missed anything. “I’m confused…”
She lifted her head as Marcus pulled a gun from his spine, where it had been concealed beneath his suit jacket. He sighed as he pointed the gun at her.
“You saw me Friday afternoon.”
“Yeah. So?”
“You weren’t supposed to be there.”
She took an instinctive step away from Marcus. “I had to go back for the directions I printed off my computer.”
“Thank you for that, by the way,” he said. “It was very easy to get onto your computer and find all your vacation information.”
“Why would you do that?” she asked, but as she spoke her mind was spinning with possibilities. None of them were good.
“You can blow a hole in my alibi, Nell Rose,” Marcus said. “I’m so sorry, but I can’t allow that to happen.”
AT THIS RATE, IT WOULDN’T take him a full ten minutes to get to Nell Rose, but as the day cooled, spots on the road refroze, so Julian couldn’t drive as fast as he’d like.
The stalker, the nut-job, had gone to a lot of trouble to get Nell Rose out of Julian’s house. Maybe he’d leave her alone, be satisfied to know that he’d accomplished what he’d set out to do in getting her out of the way, but then again…maybe not. The fact that he’d done enough research to find out the name of Nell Rose’s boss—her dead boss—was what disturbed him the most. The stalker who had imagined a relationship with Julian might want to hurt Nell Rose, scare her…maybe even take her life. The possibilities were endless and, in the end, unimportant. All that mattered was that she was very likely in danger, and he had put her there.
He could’ve asked Nell Rose about that phone call, could’ve confronted her, but instead he’d taken the word of a stranger and kicked her out without asking for even the simplest explanation. Julian had to accept that he was so broken that he wasn’t only willing but anxious to accept the worst about a woman who’d been nothing but open and honest with him.
He’d thrown her away. He’d ignored his gut feelings and tossed her out. Maybe he’d realized that she was getting too close, that their unexpected, powerful relationship had never been just about sex.
Maybe he’d get to Nell Rose in time. Maybe the stalker hadn’t moved in yet and he could be the knight in shining armor he’d thought was long dead. Maybe she was in her cabin alone, safe and unaware, and the stalker was out there somewhere laughing at his little prank.
Julian’s heart pounded; these days he didn’t have a lot of faith in maybes.
NELL ROSE COULDN’T TAKE her eyes off the gun. “Alibi for what?”
“Stu caught me embezzling from a client, and he wouldn’t be reasonable about the situation, wouldn’t give me time to make amends. So I killed him.”
Nell Rose’s legs began to tremble. “You killed Stu?”
“Not half an hour after you left the office, so…” Marcus shrugged his shoulders. “Sorry, babe, but you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Nell Rose licked her lips. She could hear her own heart beat; she tasted pennies—fear. “What are you going to do?”
He lifted the gun an inch or two. “This is the weapon that killed Stu. You’re going to kill yourself with the same gun. I’ll leave his cell phone and a couple of other effects I took from the office here, and it should be an open-and-shut case. Spurned woman kills her lover and then herself. Sad story, but common enough.” He lifted the gun and put the muzzle to her forehead. “It’ll make things ever so much easier if you’ll write a note.”
“Why should I agree to that?” she asked, taking a step back. “Why should I help you?”
“Because it’ll buy you a few more minutes of life, that’s why,” Marcus said. When she backed up he moved with her, in an awkward kind of dance.
She didn’t have much hope of rescue, but if she died immediately there was no hope at all. A few minutes might buy her the time to think, to come up with a plan to get away. If Marcus would relax enough to move that gun aside, maybe she could jump him and wrest the weapon out of his hand.
And if he did manage to kill her, maybe one last note to the world wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
She sat at the table with a ballpoint pen Marcus provided and one of the sheets of paper out of his folder.
I’m so tired of being hurt, of being wrong…of falling in love too fast and having my heart broken.
“That’s good,” Marcus said as he read over her shoulder. The gun was still pointed at her head.
“I’m cooperating,” Nell Rose said tightly. “Can you please move that gun to the side? It makes me nervous.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re not going to shoot me in the head with that thing, are you?” Nell Rose asked. “Women don’t shoot themselves. It’ll be much more believable if you use poison or a razor blade.” She couldn’t stop the shudder that worked through her body, as she imagined either of those possibilities. But if she could make him second-guess his plan, she’d buy a few more minutes.
“Slit wrists would be a nice touch,” he said musingly. “And I wouldn’t have to worry so much about gun residue and fingerprints. Keep writing,” he added in a louder voice.
Sometimes I think I just have bad luck when it comes to men, but I thought this time was different. She’d thought Julian was different. And then, pen over paper, she paused. If Marcus got what he wanted, if she was found dead of an apparent suicide and this note was a part of the evidence, would Julian realize she had written about him? Would he think he was the reason she’d take her own life? As ugly as things had turned toward the end, she didn’t want him to carry that burden.
The phone call.
“What did you say to Julian to turn him against me?”
“I told him you were a stalker.”
“And he believed you?”
“I broke into the house yesterday. You two were upstairs, and I was trying to come up with a way to get rid of both of you without making it look like murder, because the murder of Julian Maddox would raise a few eyebrows and get the cops much too interested. I started poking around and found some letters from an obsessed fan. When I called this afternoon I used a few key phrases from those letters when I told him you’d written them, and he bought it, hook, line and sinker.”
“You don’t think they’ll trace that phone call and figure out what happened?”
“I used Stu’s cell,” Marcus said, sounding pleased with himself. “That’ll raise questions, maybe they’ll think you had an accomplice, but…it won’t lead back to me, and that’s all that matters.”
“You’ve thought of everything.”
“I have, haven’t I?”
Nell Rose continued writing. None of this is your fault, so please don’t blame yourself. I could’ve loved you. Maybe, in a strange way, I already do.
“What’s this?” Marcus grabbed the paper and read what she’d just written. “This isn’t a suicide note! Stu is already dead and you’re supposed to be talking about him.”
Nell Rose snatched the paper from him. What was he going to do, shoot her? He already planned to do that. “This is my suicide note, you nimrod. I’ll say whatever the hell I want.”
He grabbed her by the back of her sweater, hauled her out of the chair and ripped the paper from her hand. “Okay, we’ll have to go with no note. I need to get out of here before it gets dark and the roads turn slick again.” He pressed the muzzle to her temple. “I sure as hell don’t have time to sit around and wait for you to bleed to death, so a shot to the head will have to do.”
Nell Rose heard the revving engine that told her a car was racing up the hill. Marcus heard it, too, and his attention faltered. The gun shifted, and Nell Rose realized this was her chance. She turned, brought her knee up into Marcus’s groin, and then, as he grunted and flailed, she turned and ran.
She ran for the door, which seemed horribly far away. It was like a dream where she couldn’t move fast enough as she waited for a bullet to slam into her back. At least if she died this way no one would think she’d taken her own life. Not her father, not her friends…not Julian.
Marcus groaned, and a shot rang out. Nell Rose waited for the pain in her back, but it didn’t come. He’d missed. She threw the door open and ran out, as Julian leaped up the steps and onto the porch.
“Are you okay?” he asked, reaching for her. She jumped; he caught her. Together they tumbled to the wooden porch as Marcus came out shooting.
JULIAN ROLLED TO THE SIDE with Nell Rose in his arms. When she was out of the direct line of fire, he released her and jumped up. He didn’t have a weapon, and he was well aware that the man—the stalker?—who’d come storming out of Nell Rose’s cabin could too easily shift his aim and shoot. Julian didn’t like guns. He had no intention of getting shot again. But damned if he was going to cower and wait for it to happen.
Besides, he’d been shot before and had survived. No way would he roll back and wait for the man with the gun to shoot Nell Rose.
All this went through Julian’s mind as he rushed the surprised gunman. He knocked the gun hand aside, wrested the weapon away and tossed it over the railing. Old training came back, and it was done in what seemed like a split second. Julian threw the gunman to the porch, pressed his knee into the man’s back and twisted an arm up and back until the shooter was immobile and all but squealing for mercy.
He heard Nell Rose’s step, turned his head to look at her without easing his hold. “You okay?”
She nodded, the movement quick and more hesitant than he liked.
“The sheriff’s on his way.”
“Good,” she said softly, and then she sank down as if her legs could no longer hold her up. “Marcus was going to kill me,” she said. “He…he shot one of my bosses Friday, and I saw him there, and…”
“He shot Stu Grayson?”
“You know about that?”
“Long story. I actually thought he was my stalker.”
“The phone call,” Nell Rose whispered.
“Yeah.”
“He told you I was your stalker, and of course, you believed him.” She was so honest, so open, he heard the raw pain in her voice. “Why shouldn’t you believe him?” she added absently.
Julian felt about two inches tall at the moment. “When Paul called looking for you and told me Grayson was dead, I knew something was very wrong.”
She blinked a couple of times. Her eyes, shocked and amazingly blue, widened. “You came here realizing you might run into a man with a gun? Or worse?”
“Pretty much.” Julian glanced down at Marcus, who wasn’t going anywhere. Marcus was a big man when he had a gun in his hand, but a coward of the first order when he was unarmed. “God, Nell Rose, I’m so sorry.”
He heard the sirens approaching. It hadn’t been near twenty minutes, so Paul must’ve dispatched a deputy who was closer to the scene.
“There’s no need to apologize,” Nell Rose said. “For anything. I mean, there was no reason for you not to believe Marcus when he told you I was a stalker, was there? You don’t know me any better than I know you. We’re strangers. You put me up for the weekend and we had a bit of fun. End of story.”
“Nell Rose…”
“End of story,” she whispered.
Two cruisers pulled up the hill, and the deputies were out of their cars and at a run within seconds. Nell Rose stood and moved to the stairs to meet them, though Julian noticed that she gripped the railing tightly for support.
“His name is Marcus Stillwell,” she said. “He killed Stu Grayson and tried to kill me.” Unable to stand she sat again, as the deputies rushed past her. Her head dropped into her hands. “God, I just want to go home. Somebody please, get me home.”