“I only want you.” Emory grasped his hand.
He knelt beside her and threaded his fingers through her hair. “What the hell were you doing on that road on foot?”
“Running to warn you.”
He dragged his thumb across her lower lip. “Don’t do it again,” he said huskily.
“Don’t ever make yourself so large a target.”
“Not much I can do about that, Doc.”
They were still staring into each other’s eyes when Jack Connell approached. “Hanging in there?”
Tremulous and tearful, Emory said, “We’re alive.”
“No small miracle,” Connell said. “Knight, Grange, and I came upon your crashed car. My crashed car.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
He made a motion of dismissal. “You weren’t injured in the crash?”
“Nothing serious. But Alice…” Speaking the name caused her voice to crack. “She struck me. Maybe with the butt of the pistol. I’ll need another brain scan.”
“Ambulance should be here in a couple more minutes.” He shuffled his feet and divided an uneasy look between her and Hayes. Hayes, getting the message, mumbled that he’d see if there was anything he could do outside and left through the open door. She was reluctant to let him go but didn’t call him back, intuiting what Jack Connell was about to say.
“Emory, your husband is dead.”
/>
She nodded. “She alluded to it. How?”
“Gunshot. Probably with the same pistol she was going to use on you.”
“Was it Jeff’s pistol?”
“No. One registered to him was found in an inside pocket of his jacket.”
“So she wasn’t lying about that. She told me he had a pistol.”
“He didn’t get to implement his plan, whatever it was, and I guess we’ll never know. He was killed inside the suite. Somehow Alice Butler got out without the deputy seeing her. Maybe the same way you and Hayes split the other night through the adjoining suite.”
He explained that after discovering Jeff’s body, he, Knight, and Grange had left the deputy there to guard the crime scene. “We were afraid for your safety and went looking for you at the motel. When I saw that my car was gone, we figured there was only one place you’d go.”
“My phone must have died before you got that part of the message. I told you I was on my way up here to warn Hayes.” She was watching him through the open doorway. His back was to her. He was talking to Buddy Grange and Sam Knight. “Alice knew.”
“She got here quick. She must’ve come upon the wrecked car and realized you’d set out on foot. She continued driving till she spotted you on the road, then—”
“Came up behind me, like before.”
“Before?”
She related Alice’s confession.
“So it wasn’t Jeff after all,” Jack said.
“Not directly. They both deceived me, and Alice told me he wasn’t all that bereaved when he thought I was dead. I believe that.”
“Hate to say it, but so do I.”