“House was too damn quiet. Thought I’d come looking for you.”
“You didn’t need to come. We got this under control.”
He kissed her a second time and looked at the girls. “I bet she’s having trouble getting that fire started.”
The girls laughed. Amber folded her arms over her chest. “Save us, Ranger. She is starving us to death.”
He squeezed Jo’s shoulder and moved past her to the unlit fire. Kneeling, he pulled matches from his pocket and lit the fire.
“That’s cheating,” Jo said.
“I go for what gets the job done, ma’am.” The flames quickly danced and licked over the wood Jo had carefully stacked into a tripod. “Though I got to say you stacked yourself a pretty pile of wood.”
As the fire grew, the girls gathered around, and Brody showed them how to find the right stick and thread their hot dogs on it. Soon the girls were gathered around the fire, cooking.
Jo folded her arms over her chest, recognizing that this was one of those rare moments in life when all the stars lined up and life felt perfect. She was here. Alive. With Brody. And the world was missing two vicious monsters now that Harvey and Robbie were dead.
Once Brody had freed her from the grave, the cops had secured the entire area. They’d removed Sadie’s body from the ground and taken it away. Sadie’s father had claimed the body and ordered it cremated. Later, Brody found surveillance images of Sadie getting into Tim’s car. Over the next three days they searched the area for bodies, using ground-penetrating radar. They’d found none.
However, the medical examiner, based on Candace Granger’s testimony, had gotten DNA from Delores Jones’s sister. Mitochondrial DNA had confirmed that the unidentified victim found by the barn had indeed been Delores, the girl Candace had seen bound over thirty years ago. Police believed after Candace fled, Smith had moved the girl to the alternate location where he’d buried her alive before fleeing the area.
Jo had hired a good lawyer for her mother, ready to defend her, but her mother had refused to take a plea agreement. She was actually relieved to have her dark secret revealed. She’d pled guilty to criminal homicide.
Because Candace had been seventeen at the time of the crime, the judge had considered her a juvenile. He’d given her five years probation.
Physically, Candace had pulled herself together. She was back at the shop, working her long, crazy hours as she’d done all Jo’s life. However, what Jo now saw was not a woman driven to succeed, but a woman trying to outrun a haunting past.
As much as Jo said to herself the past was the past, it had been impossible to let go. Being out here in the open land conjured memories of the night she’d lain in the earth, dirt weighing on her face, filling her nose and mouth and cutting off her breath.
Brody laid his hand on her shoulder, snapping her from her trance. “So where were you?”
She smiled, shaking off the darker thoughts. “Just watching you with the girls.”
He shook his head. “You slipped away from us minutes ago.” He pulled her into his embrace and she let him mold her body to his. He smelled of earth and sky. “He’s gone, Jo. He can never hurt you again.”
Brody’s strength shielded her from the ghosts. “I know.”
He squeezed her tighter. “I mean it, Jo. Nothing bad will happen to you on my watch.”
She pulled back, smiled and kissed him on the lips. “I know. I know.”
He smoothed her stray hair from her eyes. “Marry me.”
For a moment she simply stared. “What?”
“Marry me. Again. Let’s do it right this time. Church. Family.” He looked at the gaggle of girls now staring at them with wide grins. “Friends.”
She shook her head. She’d sworn she’d never mention marriage. She enjoyed him in her life and had not wanted to put a cage around him. “It’s pretty good the way it is, Brody.”
“And it will be better. We aren’t kids.”
“You’re sure?”
“Damn sure.”
Tears welled in her eyes before she kissed him. “Yes.”
He laughed and hugged her to him. As the girls squealed and circled around them, Brody pulled a ring from his pocket and slid it on Jo’s finger. “We’ll get it right this time.”
Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of
Mary Burton’s
next romantic-suspense thriller,
YOU’RE NOT SAFE,
coming in April 2014
from Kensington Publishing!
Hill Country, Texas
Monday, June 2, 1:00 A.M.
A hangover punched and pounded Rory Edwards’s brain as he woke to discover a hangman’s noose coiling around his neck. His hands lashed behind his back, his booted feet were braced on an open truck tailgate. He shifted, tried to wriggle free, but hemp dug painfully deep into an already-bloodstained neck and wrists.
What the hell?
He blinked grit and film from his blurred gaze as he glanced up the thick rope meandering over a distant tree branch and snaking down the gnarled bark to a square knot at the trunk.
Shit.
He’d done a lot of stupid things in his life, but what had he done to land here?
Panic rising, he scanned the area, illuminated by the full moon, to find dense shrubs and trees and a patch of dirt too rough to be considered a road. He didn’t recognize his surroundings, but a lonely, isolated feeling banded around his chest. Wherever he was, it was far from another human. Texas had hundreds of thousands of bleak acres where a man could die and never be found. A coyote howled in the distance.
Dread kicked and scratched his insides. Shit. Shit. Shit. He struggled to free his hands, but when they refused to budge, he couldn’t silence his fears.
“Help!” He shouted his plea over and over until his throat burned inside and out. No one came.
Breathless, he craned his neck, trying to better identify his surroundings, but as he leaned forward, his foothold slipped and he nearly skidded off the tailgate’s edge. Every muscle in his body tensed as he scrambled and threw his weight back until he was on firm footing. Hyperventilating now, minutes passed before he calmed enough to think.
This time his gaze roamed wildly and landed on a picture nailed to the hanging tree. It was an old picture, crumpled, careworn and faded. Recognition flickered instantly. He’d carried the picture in his wallet for a dozen years, and he’d cherished it. More nights than he could count he’d stared at that picture asking for strength when life shit-kicked him in the gut.
Tears filled his eyes.
The aging image captured a grinning teenaged Rory, tall, straight, and broad-shouldered. His thick sun-kissed hair skimmed piercing blue eyes. Tanned skin accentuated a crooked melting grin. His arm wrapped around the shoulders of a petite, young blond girl. She was pretty, not overly stunning like Rory, but her smile could be electric.
At first glance Rory’s embrace around the girl appeared casual and playful. Two young teenagers in love. However, closer inspection exposed a wrinkle of tension creasing Rory’s forehead and the pointed edge of desperation behind his gaze. The young Rory held the girl a little too close and a little too anxiously.
On that long-ago day, he’d been so worried about himself and his immense burdens. He’d never bothered to look past the girl’s forced smiles. Not once had he asked about her feelings. Not once. If he had really noticed her, he’d have seen she hadn’t been happy. Yes, she smiled, but her full lips often thinned into a strained line, and her green eyes reflected the weight of her own demons. She clutched his shirt as if knowing one drowning swimmer couldn’t save another.
If he’d been a little less selfish, he would have seen her sadness. Instead of whispering empty compliments in her ear or kissing her when she needed to talk, he could have soothed her wounds. He could have done so much for her. But he didn’t.
Twin weights of regret and failure settled on his shoulders as he begged for her help one last time. “I’m
sorry, Elizabeth. Save me. Just one more time, please. Don’t let me die. Save me.”
Laughter crept out of the darkness and rumbled behind him. “How many times is Elizabeth supposed to save you, Rory?” The deep, clear voice made him bristle. “Don’t you think Elizabeth deserves a break from your incessant whining?”
Shocked by the voice, Rory twisted his bound hands against the tight rope. “Who are you?”
Silence.
“Why are you doing this?”
Laughter.
In his peripheral vision, a strike and a flash of flame cut the shadows as the stranger lifted a match to a cigarette’s tip.
Rory craned his neck, trying to see the stranger’s face, but the ropes cut and burned until he stilled. The smoke’s acrid scent wandered out from the shadows. “Who are you?”
As if he hadn’t spoken, he heard “How many days of sobriety did you wipe out last night? Two hundred and five or six?”
Two hundred and six days of sobriety had bolstered his confidence and pumped up his pride. He believed he’d never go back. And yet he had tossed away those months so easily. He stared at the sparse land as barren as his promises to get clean and sober. Shit. Why had he been so reckless?
The demons, which had stalked him for many, many years, murmured familiar words. Loser. Stupid. Failure.
Shit. He thought he’d licked the drinking. Pooling tears spilled down his cheeks.
Loser. Stupid. Failure.
The words beckoned him to step off the tailgate and let the rope end his suffering. Who would notice? Who would care? Likely no one.