“Did she also teach you how to delete criminal records?”
Or did she sneak in and do it herself without anyone knowing?
“I resent the accusations, Stone. You’re not going to pin your computer screwups or missing files on me.”
I heard that before.
And both men had sounded genuinely offended. “Tell me,
Gregory
, did you start sleeping with her before or after they found Abbott’s body?”
It’d been a shot in the dark. When Reed thrust his arm between the bars, his fist missing Avery’s jaw by an inch, it confirmed Avery’s fears.
“You’re not going to tarnish my relationship with Terri with your filthy insinuations. Abbott was the scumbag, but Terri still waited until he was dead. He didn’t deserve her.”
The woman was a wolf in sheep’s clothing who used sex as her weapon of choice.
Brent Abbott hadn’t deserved her—he’d deserved better—and he’d lived long enough to realize it.
Chapter Forty-Six
Brent lived a couple blocks from Freddy’s, which was another reason why Hannah had refused to move into the guestroom after Gramp’s death. Running into Terri on a daily basis would have been too much to bear.
And here I’m seeking her before dawn.
The fence surrounding the Abbotts’ yard edged a children’s playground illuminated by a lamppost. A path in the snow led to a gate someone had left ajar. Hannah added her footsteps to the multitude of boot prints coming and going across the playground.
The back door of Terri’s house opened and a silhouette stepped onto the deck. Hannah’s breath caught in her throat. She crouched behind the upper portion of the slide and waited for Terri to shoo her cousin away. From the distance, Young didn’t look too badly injured, but he also wasn’t the one Freddy had described to be in a dire shape.
Clad in a blue nightgown, Terri stood in the doorway under a deck light. Had Hannah hid closer—or carried binoculars—she would have been able to
eavesdrop
on their conversation.
Come on, Young, Go home.
As much as Hannah wanted to tackle Young, to make him pay, this wasn’t a battle she could win on her own. She trusted Avery to take care of him and Russell, to right the wrongs in Gramp’s murder. Her qualms were with Brent’s
wife
and her lies.
Terri gestured for her cousin to go, then closed the door. The killer faded in the night, and the light on the deck went off. Hannah waited a few minutes in case Young decided to return before entering the yard.
A kid’s shovel guarded the entrance of a snow fort built near the stairs.
A red shovel…like Rory’s.
From inside his tree house, her son had witnessed his father’s last breath, and the trauma had stolen his voice.
The anger Hannah had managed to keep at bay spread its tendrils, coiling her insides and brewing revenge. She tiptoed up onto the deck. In winter, most people in town didn’t bother locking their doors. Hannah turned the doorknob and pushed without encountering any resistance. As she inched inside, her gaze roamed across the room. Neon green numbers glowed over the counter, welcoming her in the kitchen. 3:50.
Terri would have more than likely gone back to sleep after her cousin’s departure. To bring her back running without waking up her daughter, Hannah flipped the switch and turned the faucet on. Light flooded the modern kitchen as water swirled in the stainless steel sink. On the counter, dry dishes were packed in a rack, and an old-fashioned cast-iron pan rested on the stovetop. Her back to the oven, Hannah glanced between two archways, one opening into an untidy living room, and the other facing a narrow corridor.
A shadow moved along the hallway, followed by its owner. Terri halted under the arch.
“You?” With each blink of her eyelids, Terri’s face turned a darker shade of red. “Aren’t you dead?”
“You must be mistaking me for my grandfather, Terri. You know, the old man that Cousin Victor and Boyfriend Matt killed in the woods five years ago after they stabbed a defenseless woman.” Hannah drew the strength to not yell from the pressure of the handle poking the small of her back. “Or maybe you’re thinking of your late husband, Brent Abbott. He died in the same woods
after
he discovered your dirty little secret.”
“Your audacity matches your stupidity, Parker.” Her facial expression hardened as she exaggerated the motion of her mouth and crossed her arms over her chest. “My daughter is asleep. What do you want?”
“When you married Brent, did you know Lyn wasn’t his daughter?”
If only I’d known at the time of their gunshot wedding that I was pregnant.
As regrets clogged Hannah’s thoughts, they tangled the timeline.
Brent hadn’t slept with Terri until later on. She couldn’t have known about the baby unless…
“You were already pregnant.”
“I see you’re catching on, Parker. It’s a shame you have to die.” A smirk contorted Terri’s face into a cruel grimace, superposing itself onto Hannah’s memory.
“It was
you
?” The image released a suffocating wave of horror. Hannah gripped the edge of the oven to stop the room from spinning. “You were in the woods with them when they killed my grandfather.”
“Matt and Vic couldn’t even subdue the old wench. I’m the one who did all the dirty work. Your grandfather was a fool to intervene. Now, you’ll join him.” Her gaze darted across the kitchen. “Kill her.”
From the corner of her eye, Hannah caught movement in the living room. She snapped her head in that direction and froze. A rifle was pointed at her, but Matt Russell wasn’t looking at her as much as he was frowning at Terri.
“What does she mean by Lyn isn’t his daughter?” With his left thigh wrapped in a large bandage, Russell looked upset and confused.
His reaction galvanized Hannah.
“Brent isn’t Lyn’s father. He took a paternity test to prove it, a test that Terri destroyed. Had Lyn been his child, your girlfriend wouldn’t have known at her wedding that she was already pregnant. It would have been too early. She lied to him…and she lied to you.” As the pieces of the puzzle fell into a picture too gruesome not to be true, Hannah diverted her attention to Terri’s ruthless face. “Brent was suspecting the three of you, wasn’t he? You couldn’t let that happen, so you looked for a way to sway the investigation away from you. If he were to marry you, you’d be safe. You were already pregnant. All you needed was to trick him into thinking he was the father. How am I doing so far?”
As stoic as a gargoyle perched on top of a gravestone, Terri glowered. “Shoot her.”
Piercing and dark, Russell’s gaze scorched Hannah, a reminder of a different encounter at the arena.
“Lyn has brown eyes, Matt.
Your eyes.
She’s your daughter, your little girl. Terri took Lyn from you and gave her to Brent.” To create more confusion and discord, Hannah threw in calculated guesses while she reached behind her for the cast-iron pan. “She betrayed you, Matt, and she’ll betray you again.”
“Babe?” He glanced back and forth between them, slowly tipping the rifle downward. “Is that the truth?”
“Vic couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He told a nurse he’d run into trouble in the woods. When Brent heard about it, he got curious, even after we drugged the kids and dumped their bodies.” She swayed her generous attributes toward him. The provocative moves ruffled the nightgown and popped a button, exposing creamy cleavage. “I had to do something to save our necks.”
The black widow’s apparent disregard for the two teenagers that she and her accomplices had killed and framed, offered a chilling insight into her deranged mind.
She has no conscience.
“You knew Lyn was mine and you still let him—” His head jerked, muffling his words.
“He didn’t touch me, Matt. He passed out on the couch whispering Parker’s name. I had to drag him into my bed and stage the encounter. In the morning, he couldn’t remember a thing. When I accused him of taking advantage of me, he believed me. He was pathetic.”
The words sank in, unraveling Hannah’s past. Brent had cared about her, but Terri had orchestrated his betrayal—a betrayal in which he’d played no conscious part.
“Brent meant nothing, Matt. I smashed his face for you.” Terri ran her hand over her lover’s arm and onto the butt of the rifle. “You, me, Lyn, we can be a family. I got rid of Brent, Vic blew her bastard up, now it’s your turn to finish—”
A fuzzy pink rabbit flew across the archway where Terri had stood moments earlier, landing out-of-sight behind the wall.
From the time Rory was young, throwing objects across her line of vision had been his way to get her attention. Over the years, Hannah had learned to suppress excessive reaction, barely glancing in response.
Oblivious to what had just transpired within feet of them, the two killers were locked in a battle for the rifle. On the tail of the rabbit, a shadow too large to belong to a child crept on the floor. Hannah brought the heavy pan in front of her. Using it as a shield, she inched toward the back door.
Something grazed Hannah’s thigh, scorching her skin. She pressed a hand on the burning spot and stilled. The blood coating her fingers didn’t frighten her as much as the barrel aiming at her chest.
With his girlfriend by his side, Russell leered behind the iron sights of his rifle.
Glimpsing movement from her left, Hannah ventured a glance. A man in uniform advanced, his gun drawn. Their gaze met.
Avery’s lips moved. “Duck on three. One, two…”
Firmly gripping the pan, she plunged to the floor. The air sizzled and vibrations reverberated through the kitchen. A tinge of sulfur filled the air.
The acrid taste lingered on Hannah’s lips. She peeked from underneath her elbow.
Slouched with his back to the wall, his eyes closed, Russell leaked blood through a hole in his chest. The rifle was tucked under his buttocks.
Avery wobbled near the kitchen table. A chair was broken and shards of wood littered the floor. Someone had fallen onto it, or it’d been used to smash someone. Either way, it looked like Avery had been at the receiving end of that chair…and that he’d lost his gun during the attack.
The murderous widow delivered a strong heel kick, shoving her lover sideways. She snatched the rifle.
Bolting to her knees, Hannah hurled the heavy pan in Terri’s direction. It sliced through the air…
Hannah held her breath in frightful anticipation.
The makeshift weapon hit Terri in the shin. Her knees buckled, and she fell backward into a hutch. The rifle went airborne. Terri reached out…snagged the weapon by the barrel.
Vibrations akin to the ones triggered by a firing gun, coursed through Hannah’s body.
Terri’s eyes widened in shock. “He loved you…wanted a divorce.” Blood poured from the valley of her breasts. “It was all your fault, Par—”
Officers in uniforms stormed in, blocking Hannah’s view. Disoriented by the sudden chaos, she struggled to her feet. Someone grabbed her from behind and pulled her up. She spun around, ready to punch and kick, and stilled.
A heartening combination of love and worry radiated from Avery’s face. “Are you all right?”
Tears pooled in her eyes. “No.”
Heedless of the commotion around them, he wrapped her in his arms and hugged her tight. Safe in his loving embrace, she wept silently over everything that had been lost—and everything that could have been, but never was.
***
Avery carried the woman he loved inside Freddy’s spare bedroom. “She’s exhausted, Doc. Can’t you wait till tomorrow to examine her?”
“There’s dry blood on her pants.” Armed with his brown medical bag, Fred indicated the bed on which he’d placed a white towel. “You’re not tucking her in until I look for injuries. Lay her down.”
Hannah’s eyelids fluttered when he lowered her onto the mattress, but she didn’t fully wake up.
“Make it quick, Doc. I want to join her in dreamland.” Weary after the tragedy that almost cost him his future, Avery wanted to fall asleep in her arms. He didn’t care if he were about to ruffle big brother’s sensibility by sharing her bed.
“Help me get her pants and sweater off, would you?”
Stripping her down to her underwear under the watchful eye of her brother was more effective at killing the mood than a cold dip in the ocean in January—not that Avery had fantasized of seducing her tonight.
“Why didn’t you tell me she was shot?”
“It’s a flesh wound.” A bullet had grazed her thigh, taking with it a thin layer of skin. By the time Avery had looked at it, the bleeding had already stopped on its own. “The bullet didn’t enter.”
Fred grumbled something about disinfecting under his breath.
As overbearing as Hannah’s brother could be, he was also fast and proficient. “She can take the bandage off in the morning. Now take your shirt off.”
“Me? Why?” After confronting Reed, he’d gone home, peeled off his bloody shirt, taped a new bandage on, and changed into a clean uniform. He didn’t need a doctor to tell him his wound had reopened.
“My house, my rules.” Undeterred by his objection, Fred slipped the towel from under Hannah’s body to the edge of the bed. “Sit here, and make it quick, Stone. I want to go to bed.”
Very funny.
The shirt was stuck to the bandage, which was stuck to his skin. “Just skip the lecture, Doc. I needed to use my shoulder, and the hole was in the way.”
The doctor’s touch wasn’t as gentle as his sister’s, but it was as caring. “I’m giving you one more day. If it doesn’t close, I’m stitching it. How’s the pain?”
Atrocious.
“Manageable.”
“Good.” Fred snapped his bag shut and gathered the dirty towels. “No physical activities, of any kind, for as long as you’re under my roof. Good night, Stone—and thank you for saving my sister.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
After three days of hiding in the woods, Victor was ready for a long shower and a hot meal, but his house was out of bounds. He regretted not installing booby traps when his devious cousin suggested it. Blowing them into smithereens would have avenged her death.