Now, that same voice announced she and Hank were about to die with no more inflection than if she'd said it looked like rain tonight.
Determination to survive stiffened Beth's spine and gave her the courage to face her enemy. Pressing her hands to the cool, hard-packed dirt, she stood up and came eye-to-eye with Sarah Jane's fury.
“How could you let it happen to him?” Her steel-gray bob gleamed in the moonlight and hate blazed from her eyes.
This wasn't what Beth had expected. “What are you talking about? I haven't done anything to anyone.”
“Do you know how long it took me to find him? How many hours I stayed in the office searching for him?” Anger shook her voice, took it an octave higher. “Computer records. Personnel files. Wills. Trusts. Looking for clues, any nugget of information. I knew his father wouldn't have let him go far, even after he stole him from my arms.”
“Sarah Jane, you need to put the gun down.” Hank stood up, his weight heavy on his left leg. “We'll sit down and get everything worked out.”
Fear tickled the back of Beth's neck, adding to the frenzied turmoil insider her like a cool breeze on a freezing night. Hank was hurt. He must have twisted his ankle in the fall.
On the verge of freaking out when he sent her a reassuring smile, Beth focused her mind on the immediate danger.
As if he'd never spoken, Sarah Jane went on with her rant, gun trained on Beth. “How could you let him get murdered? It was supposed to be you. Wasn’t becoming his father’s favorite enough for you? Did you have to take his life too?”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Shut up and get down on your knees.”
Going after the gun wasn't an option. She'd never get close enough before Sarah Jane got off a shot. Scanning the ground out of the corner of her eye, she looked for weapons. A rock. Big stick. Anything. But the most dangerous thing she found was a trio of dark mushrooms growing at the base of a pine tree. Fuck.
Hands outstretched and right foot barely touching the uneven ground, Hank hobbled forward. “I can only imagine what you've been through. I'm sure once you tell us everything we'll understand. But please, lower the gun.”
Sarah Jane's gaze flicked over to him for half a second. Then, with as much care and thought as a person gave to swatting a fly, she fired.
The crack boomed through the trees.
A flurry of beating wings exploded around them while birds took to the sky, escaping the death and fear palpable in the underbrush.
Hank crumbled, blood soaking through his pants near his right knee.
Adrenaline rocketed Beth toward Hank. Forgetting Sarah Jane, the gun and everything except for him, she rushed to his side. The dry October leaves crunched under her knees as she dropped down, taking his head onto her lap.
“Hank.” His name tore from her lips, more a desperate cry than anything else.
“Don't worry.” He gritted out the words through clenched teeth. “She got my bum knee.”
A joke. Her heart was lodged in her throat and he had the gall to make a joke about getting shot. Relief soaked into her bones. “Hank Layton, you're such a pain in the ass.”
He smirked up at her. “Is that your way of saying you love me?”
Looking down at the man she'd dreamed about for years, she stopped fighting and opened herself up to the truth. “Yeah, it is.”
“You two really make me sick.” Bitterness thickened Sarah Jane's voice. “It's not real. Love never is. You know what is though? Revenge. Taking your time, planning everything down to the last bit and then breaking someone into teeny, tiny, jag
ged pieces.”
Heat raced through Beth and she ripped her attention from the man she loved to the woman who threatened him. “How could you do this? Ruin lives for what? Petty revenge?”
“Petty?” She raised her face to the sky and cackled. “No, when someone kills the woman you were and steals your child, petty is not the word for it.”
Hank squeezed her hand, slid his cellphone from his back pocket and pushed it into her hand. “Voice record memo,” he whispered and struggled into a sitting position against a tree trunk.
Not wanting to draw attention to the phone, she fumbled with it in the shadow until her thumb found the record button on the side. Pay dirt.
“You're under arrest, Sarah Jane Hunihan. You have the right to remain silent…”