Not This Time (27 page)

“You got it.” Margaret paused, her voice less certain. “Do you think Sara’s in trouble?”

She did. She really did. “I intend to find out. For now, keep everything away from her. I don’t want even a piece of spam going to her. Redirect her mailbox to one only we can access. Encrypt it.” Beth’s mind whirled. “I’m not shutting her out—you understand that, right?”

“You’re protecting her.”

“Trying, Margaret. I’m trying.”

Against NINA Beth had serious doubts about her success.

“What’s your ETA?”

Mark Taylor’s voice carried to Beth and its pitch sent a chill racing up her back.
ETA. Estimated time of arrival
. One of many familiar acronyms. Who was coming? And what was wrong? She’d tried three times to reach Joe but hadn’t gotten him. And every time she started to tell Mark she might have found the connection between the club attack and Robert’s kidnapping, she heard Nora’s voice in her mind:
“Keep your mouth shut.”
Then Joe’s warning.
“Things get twisted …”

Praying her silence wasn’t a mistake, she rushed into Sara’s living room. Mark stashed his mobile phone and, sober-faced, sat at the empty electronics table. “Who’s coming over?”

“Jeff.” Mark avoided looking at her.

The nonverbal warnings grew stronger. “When?”

“Any second now.”

A scant minute later, the doorbell rang.

Jeff walked in from the pouring rain, shrugging out of his drenched raincoat. Never had she seen him look so grim. “Hi, Beth. Where’s Sara?”

“Sleeping in the family room.”

“Still?” Jeff hung his raincoat outside under the porch, then closed the door.

“After the reduction news this morning, Harvey prescribed two pills. He says she’ll probably be out until morning.”

Jeff dragged a hand through his damp hair, shaking loose clinging raindrops. “This can’t wait. We have to talk.” His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. “It isn’t good news.”

“Is he dead?” Sara’s voice sounded from behind them.

Beth turned. Sara’s hair was disheveled and she was wearing black pj’s, a robe, and slippers. The slippers surprised Beth, but she was glad to see good sense overriding Robert’s preferences. “You shouldn’t be up. The medicine—”

“Beth, stop.” Sara pivoted her gaze to Jeff. “Is Robert dead?”

“We need to sit down.” Jeff shot a pleading look at Beth and led Sara to the sofa. “You too, Beth.”

Stone-faced and distant, Mark had disassociated—a horrible-news harbinger.

Tears gathered on Sara’s lashes and her face splotched red. “Well?”

Jeff twisted toward Beth and covertly mouthed, “Inhaler?” When Beth nodded, he sat directly across from Sara. “You remember that Robert’s rental car was found in Destin.” Sara nodded and Jeff went on. “That same day, the sheriff’s office up north requested I come up to Magnolia Branch, but I was tied up with the club attack so it wasn’t mentioned to me until today.”

Clyde was buried in Magnolia Branch. What did this have to do with Robert? Sara grasped Beth’s hand. It was ice-cold.

“The sheriff wanted me to take a look at something their deputies found on a routine disturbance call. Bill Conlee was one of the deputies. I’ve known him a lot of years. He’s good, Sara. He saw your press conference on the news and got a hunch. So he acted on it.”

She nodded but held her silence.

Jeff cleared his throat. “Race Miller from up north also saw the newspaper article about Robert and called in about the same disturbance.”

“I know Race,” Sara said. “His wife, Aline, too.” She looked at Beth. “We bought Clyde’s property for the moms from him.”

“Right.” Jeff looked at Beth, then back to Sara. “Race sold you that property because a porn ring had been filming on it in an old abandoned shed.”

“He told me. He’s the pastor of the local church,” Sara told Beth.

Beth stilled. Were pornographers the connection and not NINA? Was that what was troubling Sara? Possible, but it didn’t feel right. They wouldn’t have Sara refusing calls from Quantico. “Why didn’t I know about this?”

“It was over and had nothing to do with anything.” Sara returned her attention to Jeff. “So …?”

“So Race’s call was a complaint that they were back.” Jeff swiped his pug nose. “When the officers got there, the shed was empty except for a bloody mattress.”

“Robert!” Sara’s face bleached and she gasped. “Oh no.” She clasped her throat but shoved away the inhaler Beth offered. “I don’t need that. Go—go ahead, Jeff.”

“The amount of blood on the mattress was significant.” He paused but she didn’t utter a sound. Didn’t blink, didn’t breathe. “There was no body—the deputies searched extensively.”

“But … what? I hear a
but
in your voice, Jeff.”

“Bill Conlee felt no one could sustain that substantial a blood loss and survive.”

Her jaw parted and Sara hissed in shallow, staggered breaths. “But there was
no body. He could be wrong. Maybe it was someone else. It could be someone else. Robert could still be alive.”

Beth looked at the hope in Sara’s face and nearly cried. Only a desperate woman could look at and hear Jeff and deny the evidence to back up his bad news was coming.

“When they failed to find a body and no one was reported missing, they thought the mattress could be a prop used in filming the, uh, movie. But when Bill learned Robert’s kidnapper didn’t retrieve the money, he had the lab test the mattress blood. That was the hunch he followed.”

Oh, God
. Beth clasped Sara’s arm tighter.
Help her. Please, help her
.

“DNA tests were done, just like on the rental car. It was human, Sara,” Jeff said slowly. “The lab compared the sample to the one we tested from Robert’s brush.” Jeff blinked, then blinked again. “All the results are in now.”

Sara’s face twisted in agony. “They match.”

Jeff nodded. “I’m so sorry. The blood on the mattress is Robert’s.”

A knot lodged in Beth’s throat and her eyes stung.

“So he was injured,” Sara said. “That doesn’t mean he’s—”

“Hank Green examined the mattress and confirmed Bill’s opinion. Robert couldn’t have sustained that substantial a blood loss and lived.”

“But there’s no body.” Sara shook her head. “If there’s no body …”

“Hank estimated the blood loss at six pints, Sara. There’s no doubt,” Jeff said firmly but with compassion. “I’m very sorry, but your husband is dead.”

Sara crumpled like a broken doll, collapsing into Beth’s arms. Beth held her, felt her whole body heave and ebb in heart-wrenching sobs that speared through Beth’s soul.

“Use your inhaler.” Beth looked over at Jeff. “Call Harvey Talbot.”

Mark asked, “Do you need an ambulance?”

“No. No.” Sara pulled away from Beth. “No doctor, no ambulance. Just let me think. I need to think.”

Odd. Beth passed her a tissue from the box. “You need to
think
?”

“I meant mourn. I need to mourn.” Sara flushed. “Don’t worry. I’m okay.”

Beth studied her. Sara looked okay, but how could she be? Beth didn’t dare to trust her eyes. “Let Harvey check. Please.”

“I said I’m okay. There’ll be no attack.” Determination fired in her. “Not this time.”

Beth stared a long moment. There was sadness but no grief. Nothing of a woman being told the love of her life was gone. She had loved Robert; Beth knew she had. But Sara didn’t look much like she loved him right now. She looked … something else. Something Beth couldn’t tag but was strange. Very strange.

Bits of Sara’s cryptic messages flashed through Beth’s mind.
“Protect yourself from me
—
and if you can, protect me from myself.”
Her intimate conversations with Jeff—the sparks and signs of a developing relationship. The terrace messenger. Joe as Thomas Boudin with his
“Sara’s in trouble
 … 
not hospitalized for mild attacks.”

The club attack and missing groom. Robert’s kidnapping. Joe’s Boudin case—
“This Robert is lethally dangerous.”
And now, Sara’s strangest reaction yet.

Robert’s dead and Sara’s … relieved?

Thomas Boudin had some explaining to do.

Beth spent the weekend slipping out into Sara’s backyard to call Joe on their special phone.

He didn’t answer. Not the first or fifth or twenty-fifth time she tried reaching him.

She plucked a leaf off a jasmine bush and tossed it to the ground. Should she be angry? Or scared stiff NINA had found him? Unsure, she alternated between the two. “Let him be safe.” She looked skyward. “At least until I know whether I should slap or hug him.”

“Beth?” Peggy Crane called out to her. “You okay?”

She turned away from the cove toward the house, walked toward Peggy. “I’m fine.”

“He still isn’t answering?”

“Not yet.” Beth was half sorry she’d told Mark she’d been unable to reach Joe, but she thought maybe he should know in case Joe had run into trouble. Peggy had overheard and now knew the reason Beth eased outside every chance she got. “I’m worried, Peg. He said he’d be at the other end of the phone whenever I needed him.”

Peggy hooked their arms, patted Beth’s. “You know how his work is, hon. He’ll call when he can.”

“NINA’s after him.” Beth spoke her deepest fear. “What if—?”

“Mark would know. The whole team would know.”

So they all were working behind the scenes—Sam, Nick, and Tim, as well as Mark and Joe. “Then why hasn’t he called?”

“I don’t know. I wish I did. I’m rather fond of your Joe. Of all the team, really.”

So was Beth.

They went back inside. The crush of people had thinned out a little. Sara spoke to everyone and looked less fragile than Beth ever recalled. Beth was glad; she just wished she understood it.

“I’ve got to get back to the center to relieve Lisa.” Peggy hooked her purse over her arm. “If you need me, yell.”

“Thank you, Peggy.”

Beth watched her go, pretended not to hear Nathara complaining about spending her entire vacation surrounded by people in mourning, and located Nora—sitting on the sofa, quiet, watchful, and unseeing, her sadness reaching across the space between them. Missing Clyde was etched into her face. Sara didn’t have that look. When had she stopped loving Robert?

The thought stunned Beth. She shooed it away as nonsense, but it refused to go.

“If I could go back …”

Beth stood statue still and let the truth sink in. Sara
had
stopped loving Robert.

And that raised a whole new crop of questions.

Questions Beth couldn’t answer.

14

T
he rest of the weekend was as hard as only times of grief and mourning can be—and as busy, with a steady stream of people dropping by with condolences, flowers, plants, and food. Maria was overwhelmed, but Mel, Lisa, Annie, and the others from Crossroads stepped in and managed the crush.

Predictably, not one of Robert’s friends came to see Sara.

On Monday Maria made two trips to the local mission to drop off carloads of food and still had more than would fit in Sara’s fridge.

Nora and Annie sat with Sara in the family room. “Hank says you might need a little help with the funeral arrangements,” Annie said.