Starcrossed Colorado (Hart County #1)

34. Ashford

THIRTY-FOUR

Ashford

I sped down Elias’s driveway. Nearly every light in the house seemed to be on.

It had taken me twenty minutes to get here. I’d been speeding so fast my tires had nearly spun out on some of the curves. On the way, I’d called Teller and reported everything we’d learned. I’d begged him to send an officer here to check on Emma and Maisie. Unfortunately, he and his officers were still on Main Street dealing with the reporters and irate citizens.

Teller had told me to be patient. That we had no specific reason to think Elias would hurt them, even if he was L. He’d promised to notify the sheriff’s department, and someone would head this way as soon as possible.

No police cars were here yet. But I wasn’t waiting. Not when the two people I loved most could be in danger.

I jumped out of the truck and ran toward the porch, dialing Emma’s phone again at the same time. It went straight to voicemail.

Then I saw the front door. It was wide open.

I took a step over the threshold. “Emma!” I shouted. “Maisie!”

Silence.

A scream ripped through the quiet. But it hadn’t come from the house.

Sprinting out the door, I crossed the yard toward the barn. The side door was open. I rushed inside. It was dark except for the faint glow of a flashlight on the dirt floor.

I saw the outline of heavy male shoulders crouched over something on the ground. Elias.

He was on top of Emma with his hands around her throat.

I yelled, not even recognizing my own voice, it was so feral. My body crashed into Elias, knocking him to the side. We both rolled in the dirt. He leaped onto me, trying to get me into a submission hold. I kneed him hard in the side. Slammed my fist into his chin. Faintly, I heard Emma coughing and retching.

Elias careened to one side, and I scrambled over him, wrapping my arms around him to put him in a chokehold as he tried defensive maneuvers.

Fury had nearly blinded me. My arms squeezed as he kept fighting against me. “I thought you were my friend,” I gritted out. I clenched my teeth so hard that I bit my own tongue, tasting the metallic tang of blood.

His face was turning bright red. He struggled, but I held him too tightly for him to move. I was choking off his air supply.

My eyes stung with bitter tears as I thought of the depth of his betrayal. Everything he had taken from me and my daughter. And what he had almost taken just now.

“I should kill you for what you’ve done,” I said. I was close. So fucking close. “But I won’t. This is your one chance. Yield.”

I eased up enough that Elias could nod.

Panting, I pushed off of him roughly, knocking him back against the dirt as I stood and put a couple of feet of distance between us.

“Ashford—” he started to say, coughing.

“Shut your mouth.” I searched for Emma from the corner of my eye. “Baby, you okay?”

“I’m all right.” Emma’s voice was hoarse. She came up behind me, and I reached back to touch her, reassuring myself that she was there.

She was trembling. That, plus the ragged sound of her voice, made me want to lash out at Elias again. Make him suffer for hurting her.

He rubbed at his neck. “You’ve got this all wrong. Emma attacked me, and I was defending myself.”

“You’re pathetic. Blaming Emma for this. You killed Lori, didn’t you? Was that her fault too? Only a weak, pathetic man blames women for his failings.”

Pure hatred flashed through Elias’s eyes.

He charged at me.

Keeping Emma behind me, I blocked his punch. Then slammed my fist in a vicious uppercut to his jaw. His arms pinwheeled as he fell backward. On his way down, Elias’s head cracked against a jutting piece of metal on his brewery equipment. His body went limp.

Emma gasped as dark blood spread out beneath his head.

I turned and gathered her up, carrying her toward the door. It was dark in the barn, but she didn’t need to see that.

Once we were outside, Emma grabbed hold of my shirt, her entire body quaking. Faintly, I heard the shrill whine of sirens approaching. Good. Saved me from finding where I had dropped my phone and calling emergency services myself.

“Ashford, I found a photo of Elias and Lori together.”

I set her down, still holding her close. I was anxious to find Maisie, but first, I had to make sure Emma was okay. “You don’t have to talk if it hurts too much.”

“No, I do. When I realized Elias was L, I sent Maisie to the neighbor’s house. I made sure she was safe. We have to get her.”

“Thank you for taking care of her. Wish I’d gotten here sooner.” She could barely stand without my help. I led her over to the porch, where we sat on the steps. The light bleeding from inside illuminated Emma’s tear-streaked face.

I examined her neck. The sight of those marks, put there by a man I had called a friend, ripped me open in the worst kind of torment. Turned me raw and unforgiving. “I’m so sorry, baby.”

If Elias hadn’t already been bleeding on the floor of the barn, I couldn’t account for what I would’ve done to the man.

“We’ll get you checked out at the hospital.”

“I’ll be okay. I tried to get to my phone. I tried to tell you. But he caught me. Ashford, he was going to…”

“I know.”

“You stopped him.”

“I love you so much.” I kissed her hair, holding her as gently as I could.

Two days later, I went to look for Emma and found her in Judson’s living room, her head bent with Piper and Grace as they whispered. We were at the ranch, the same place we’d been staying since the night everything had blown up.

Emma looked up, eyes instantly brightening when she saw me.

“I just got off the phone with Teller,” I said. “Where’s Maisie?”

“Outside with Stella and Ollie.” Emma gestured at the expanse of windows, which overlooked the pastures behind Judson’s home. I could just make out the edge of the corral.

Good, I thought, relaxing internally. I’d known Maisie was close. But it still felt better to be able to see her. And to have Emma here with me.

I’d almost lost her.

The police and paramedics had shown up just as I carried Emma out of Elias’s barn. Maisie had asked the neighbors to call 911. My little girl had done amazingly, and she’d been so brave.

Maisie knew little of what had really happened. She knew a scary man had been at the house that night, and I’d said that Elias had to go away and probably wouldn’t be back. But thankfully, she was young enough to accept what I told her without many questions. Though she had asked about the marks on Emma’s neck.

“ Did you have to fight with the scary man ?” Maisie had asked her that night after we arrived here at Judson’s.

I had picked up my daughter, holding her so close that she protested. Wishing that I could always keep her safe. Protect her. Not just from physical danger, but from all the ugly truths of the world.

Then Emma answered, “ I fought him, yes. Your dad did too. The scary man is gone now. We all did a really good job, especially you .”

Maisie smiled proudly. “ And Stella .”

“ Yes. And Stella too .”

The paramedics had pronounced Elias dead at the scene. Since Elias technically lived outside the boundaries of Silver Ridge, the sheriff had jurisdiction over the investigation. His deputies had reunited us with Maisie. The paramedics had checked Emma’s injuries, but she’d refused to go to the hospital, insisting instead that she stay with us. With lots of TLC, she was recovering.

Judson offered his house, since he had plenty of bedrooms. Callum and Grace had already been here, and Piper and Ollie had arrived the next morning to join us. Judson’s acres of land put a nice barrier between us and the media.

His ranch hands lived in a bunkhouse nearby, but they’d all had background checks when he hired them. Of course, it wasn’t possible to know a person’s soul on the inside, was it?

Elias had fooled me completely. Fooled us all.

“Ashford?” Emma prompted, bringing me back to the present.

“Sorry.” I shook off those thoughts and sat on the couch beside her. “What did you say?”

“That Judson and Callum are helping the kids feed carrots to the horses. It’s pretty cute.”

I squinted again at the view. “Maisie hasn’t talked Judson into letting her ride one by herself, has she?”

Piper laughed. “No. Much to the kids’ disappointment. Ollie would be standing in the saddle right now at a full gallop if he had his way.”

Judson kept goats, pigs, and chickens in addition to the horses. Maisie and Ollie had been keeping busy. Under close supervision, the kids had taken some rides on the horses, but of course they wanted to gallop off on an adventure without meddlesome parents getting in the way.

My daughter loved it here. She now wanted to be a cowgirl. Plus a superstar singer, of course. But I wasn’t ready to let her ride on such a huge animal on her own. I would probably get there, but not until she’d had a lot more practice. And especially not if Ollie was being a bad influence.

Grace got up from the couch and took the chair opposite, tucking her legs beneath her. “So, what did Teller say?”

“Sheriff’s deputies interviewed Elias’s ex-wife this morning. Holly.”

“Yeah?”

“She’s filled in a few more of the pieces.”

“Is it as bad as the rest of it?” Emma asked, voice still quieter than usual. She touched her neck just below the bruises.

“I don’t even know what scale we’re on anymore. But yeah, it’s bad. Holly said she suspected he was having an affair three years ago. She didn’t know it was with Lori. But Elias had also been getting more volatile at home. Threatening her, grabbing her arms and leaving bruises. Things like that.”

This stuff was confidential, part of the investigation. Teller should not have been sharing it with me, since I was the guy who’d ended Elias’s life. But we all knew it was self-defense. The final ruling from the sheriff’s department was a pure formality.

“Then, on the night Lori died, Elias showed up back at their house completely freaked. He insisted that Holly say he’d been with her the whole evening.”

After Lori died, Elias and Holly had been interviewed. Except for his wife, no one suspected he hadn’t been at home that night. Certainly not me.

“So his wife lied about Elias’s alibi,” Emma said. “Does Holly know what really happened? If Elias intentionally pushed Lori into the highway?”

I shook my head. “No, Elias never explained any of that to her. But he told her he’d kill her if she contradicted his story.”

Grace put her hand over her mouth. “That’s horrifying. Maybe I can go out to Denver and see her. Holly was going through all that alone. Thank goodness she finally left him.”

“Apparently she got fed up a couple of years ago, packed, and drove away to stay with her cousins,” I said. “Elias never risked showing his anger in front of anyone else, so he just let her go.”

Piper rubbed her eyes. “I feel like I should’ve seen it. All these years he was our friend. I never would’ve thought he could be capable of something like that.”

“Me neither.” I never would’ve guessed that Elias had been seeing Lori, much less that he could be so monstrous as to hurt her. Or hurt Emma. I reached for her hand, tugging her closer. “But I think he did it. He killed Lori. Even though we’ll never know for sure.”

Without Elias confessing what had really happened that night, all we could do was speculate.

But my hunch was this:

Lori had asked Elias to meet with her that night, planning to break up with him. She drove to the trailhead about a mile away from Elias’s house. Maybe he walked there to meet her. Or drove himself.

We knew that Lori had walked the trail, dropping her phone near the old abandoned cabin not far from the highway. Elias had probably been with her. Maybe they’d been talking. He might’ve tried to convince her to give him another chance.

But when she wouldn’t, when she told him it was over, he snapped. Lashed out.

Lori ran. Elias chased her. Maybe she went toward the glow of those headlights on the highway, hoping to find someone, anyone , who’d help her. But at the last moment, Elias shoved her into the car’s path. An act of pure, reckless desperation.

He had done the same two days ago with Emma. Chased her down and tried to silence her. Thankfully he hadn’t succeeded a second time.

After the car had hit Lori, Elias must’ve gotten out of there as fast as possible. It was simply luck of the draw that the driver had been elderly with poor eyesight, which made it all too easy for the police to dismiss what she’d seen.

And we still wouldn’t know the truth if Ayla hadn’t appeared in town. If Emma hadn’t found that photo.

Elias could have gotten rid of it, but he had kept it, hidden away. I wondered about that. But now that I knew everything he’d told Emma, the grudge he had apparently borne against me since high school, it made sense. Elias wasn’t the kind to let go of the past.

He’d had that darkness inside of him. Festering.

Elias had to have been nervous already. With Ayla’s appearance, he would have expected she could say something to point the finger in his direction. There was no way he could’ve known how much Lori shared with her sister.

I knew what it was like to have a secret. That sense of a noose tightening when you knew it was bound to be discovered. Only, Elias’s secrets were so much darker than any of mine.

He’d followed Emma at least once, supposedly to look out for her, but probably out of that same twisted jealousy of me.

He’d pursued my sister .

I hadn’t killed Elias intentionally, and I was glad not to have that stain on my conscience, if only so that it didn’t affect Maisie or Emma by association.

But was I sorry that Elias was dead? Fuck, no. I was not.

I wrapped my arm around Emma, brushing my nose over her hair. Taking that small comfort that I’d nearly lost forever.