Chapter 24
Dax’s mind spun and he lowered himself into a chair beside Lily in the waiting room. Vanessa had planned to go to Mrs. Steele’s house. She could still be there, but that wouldn’t explain why she or Ben couldn’t be reached.
Or why she’d texted to let him know they were on their way to the hospital.
“Where’s your phone?” Dax asked Madden.
“What?”
“Your phone. Get it.”
Madden fished it from his back pocket. “I can try calling Ben again, but I don’t think he’ll answer.”
“Don’t you have some app that includes everyone from work? To keep tabs on everyone?”
Madden glowered. “I don’t keep tabs on anyone. It’s just to keep an eye on where the guys are. In case we need to find them.” The light bulb finally went off and Madden fiddled with his phone. “Okay. We’ve got a location.”
Dax shot up and glanced at the screen. “The little dot isn’t moving. Why isn’t it moving?”
“I don’t know, but we’re going to find out. Lily, can you stay here with Dad? He woke up and shouldn’t be alone. I’ll text you where we’re going. Call Deputy Sanders and let him know we think something’s wrong and could use some help.”
Dax didn’t wait to hear Lily’s response before dashing outside. Rain splashed down and thunder rumbled in the distance. He made a beeline for his truck when a hard hand on his shoulder locked him in place. He spun around, irritation fisting his hands at his sides. “What the hell, man?”
“My truck.”
Not wanting to waste time arguing, Dax followed him to his vehicle and jumped inside.
“Hold this,” Madden said, handing over his phone as soon as he got behind the wheel.
The tracking app was still on the screen. Dax stared at the dot that represented Ben and urged it to move. “Still nothing. What if they were in an accident?”
“Then we need to get to them quickly. Try calling Vanessa again.”
He did, but with the same results. A kind of fear he’d never experienced hummed in his veins. “Nothing. I should have never let her visit Mrs. Steele without me.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Madden said. “It won’t get us anywhere. Stay calm and focused.”
Dax snorted. “Seriously? That’s your great advice? This is my fault. I screwed up and Vanessa could be hurt.”
“Dude, you don’t know anything is even wrong. Shut up and stop focusing on the worst-case scenario.” A few tense moments of silence lingered between them as Madden drove toward the location he’d plugged into his GPS.
Dax kept a firm grip on the phone and his gaze latched on the screen. They got closer and closer to the little dot. Rain splashed down, slowing their progress.
“Roads are a mess.” Madden slapped the steering wheel.
Dax’s stomach muscles clenched. “They’ll be worse up where it says Ben and Vanessa are. I’m going to jump out of my damn skin.”
Madden flicked a quick glance his way before maneuvering off the highway and onto the narrow road that wound up the mountain. “You’ve got it bad.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” He didn’t have the patience to deal with his brother’s cryptic comments right now.
“Lily told me. I should have listened. That woman’s always right.” He shook his head, the slightest smile lifting one corner of his mouth.
Dax had to fight not to smack the look right off his face. “Stop blabbing over there. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’ve never seen you like this over a woman before. Lily said she could tell you’d fallen hard by the way you looked at Vanessa.”
He could keep arguing but there wasn’t a point. Madden was right. He’d never experienced such intense feelings for anyone as he did for Vanessa. She was sweet and kind. Caring and compassionate. Strong and funny. She was perfection tied up in a beautiful package and he might have blown it.
Madden’s phone rang, sending his heart galloping until he spied Lily’s name. “Can I answer?”
“Go for it. The roads are in rough shape, and I need to stay focused.”
“Hey, Lil. It’s Dax. You find out anything?”
“I just got off with the phone with Deputy Sanders. I gave him the location Madden told me, and he said emergency responders are already there. An accident was called in. Apparently, it’s pretty bad. I thought you should know.”
His stomach dropped just as flashing lights came into view and blocked the way. “We’re here. We’ll call you when we know more.”
Madden muttered under his breath. “Looks like a landslide came through.”
Bile shot up his throat. He thought the roads might become a problem with the constant rain and storms. Ben wouldn’t have known what to look out for while traveling up the mountain.
He searched for Ben’s truck, but only the emergency vehicles were parked among the river of mud and rocks cascading down the jagged rockface.
Madden parked, and Dax catapulted himself from the vehicle. He jogged to the back of an ambulance. The back door was flung open, but no one was inside. “Vanessa!”
Madden came up beside him and pointed down the ravine. “Looks like they’re down there.”
Horror fisted his heart. Ben’s truck sat on top a sea of debris that had been caught in the landslide, knocked onto its side and held in place by a giant pine tree. Two firefighters worked to get someone out the passenger side that looked up to the gray sky.
“We should give them room to work,” Madden said. “We don’t want to get in the way.”
“Like hell I’m staying up here.” He moved as quickly as he could, picking his way past upturned roots and boulders.
Dirt caked onto his jeans and mud attached to his shoes with each step.
Rain continued to fall, soaking through his clothes.
Time crawled by and he kept his gaze fixed on the rescue, praying to see Vanessa’s face.
One of the firefighters spotted him and held up a hand.
“Stay where you are. The scene is a mess and disturbing it more might cause everything to shift. We don’t want this truck to plummet past this tree before we get this guy to safety.
” He returned his attention to the rescue mission before Dax could ask more questions.
He stayed in place, leaning forward with his palms on his thighs. A still body was lifted from inside the truck and placed on a waiting gurney. Two medical workers hoisted the gurney and trudged through the debris toward the top of the incline.
The firemen gathered their supplies and followed suit.
“Wait!” he yelled, charging forward. “There was a woman in there. Where is she?”
Commotion stopped the EMTs, and Ben struggled to sit. “Dax,” he said, the wind beating back his voice so it was barely above a whisper.
Dax ran to Ben’s side, reaching him in time to keep him from hopping off the gurney as the medics fought to keep him still.
“She’s gone, man. I woke up just in time to see her following a guy up the mountain. I tried to get out and couldn’t. I’m so sorry, dude.”
“Did you see what he looked like? Hear her say his name? Anything?”
Ben shook his head then winced.
“We need to get him in the ambulance then to the hospital,” one of the medics barked.
Dax took a step away and let them continue. There was nothing more for Ben to tell him. Vanessa was gone, and if Ben was right, she’d walked away. But she wouldn’t leave Ben injured and alone, wouldn’t disappear without telling someone where she was going.
Confusion swirled inside his brain as he jogged back up the mountain to find Madden speaking with Mrs. Steele.
The older woman stood under a yellow umbrella, bundled in an olive-green raincoat.
“Is Vanessa okay? I heard the rumbling and came out to see if anyone was hurt. She’d just left.
I saw the truck off the side of the road, but also the one leaving. I don’t know which one she was in.”
“You saw the other truck?” Dax asked. “What about the driver?”
“It’s hard to see with all this rain. All I could make out was the color.”
“What color was it?” Dax asked, but he already knew the answer.
“Black.”
The confirmation hit him with the force of a hurricane.
Vanessa may have survived the landslide, but now she was in more danger than ever before.
* * *
Vanessa clenched her hands into fists in her lap.
She tried to keep track of the twists and turns along the country roads, but she had no idea where she was.
Her brain worked in overdrive to figure a way out of this nightmare, but the gun resting on Ethan’s thighs was a constant reminder that she was screwed.
“Where are you taking me?”
He didn’t answer. Just kept his gaze fixed on the road and his mouth shut.
His silence was unnerving. If she was about to die, she at least deserved to understand why.
“You could have let me stay in the truck. Why save me just to kill me?”
Nothing but the windshield wipers answered her.
Panic clawed inside her throat. She had to think of a different approach if she wanted Ethan to tell her anything.
“Did Chip put you up to this? I mean I know my uncle hates me and everything, but I really didn’t think he’d stoop this low.
If the guy wants that old house this bad, he can have it.
I’ll pack up and move back to Chicago. Just tell him he won, okay?
Then we’ll forget whatever this is.” She waved a hand between the two of them.
Ethan snorted. “He doesn’t care about that stupid house. He just doesn’t want you there.”
“Why not?”
“Because we knew this would happen. Damn it, everything was fine.” He smacked a hand against the steering wheel.
“We cleaned up our mess and no one suspected a thing. Your mom threw a wrench in things, but as soon as she was out of town, we had nothing left to worry about. Until you showed up. You ruined everything.”
Now that she’d loosened his lips, she struggled to keep up with the torrent of words pouring from his mouth. “I didn’t ruin anything. I inherited property from my grandfather and moved in. That’s it. What could I have possibly done that was so bad you’ve had to torture me?”
“You came back. That was enough.”
Frustration ate away at her. She’d been stuck in the same loop of fear and confusion since she’d arrived in town, and she was sick of it. Ethan might put a bullet in her head. If she couldn’t escape her death, she at least deserved to know why.
Wait. He could have shot her in Ben’s truck.
Hell, could have left her in the teetering vehicle, hoping nature would sweep in and finish the job without him having to further dirty his hands.
He wouldn’t answer her when she’d asked why he’d saved her in the first place, she might as well try a different approach. “You won’t shoot me.”
He finally glanced her way and pure rage shone from his eyes. “Wanna test that theory?”
“You need to be sure I’m dead, so leaving me in the truck was out because there was a chance I survived. You could have just shot me back there, but then once someone found me, they’d know it was murder. If you’re going to get away with killing me, you need to make it look like an accident.”
The word tasted bitter on her tongue as another accident floated back to the forefront of her mind. Pieces clicked together. She might be grasping at straws, but there was only one way to find out.
“Just like with Garrison.”
Ethan clenched his jaw so hard she feared his teeth would burst through the skin.
She’d hit a nerve.
“I read about him in the newspaper. The article claimed it was a tragic accident, and he drowned in the river behind my house. Weird how he had an injury to the back of his head when they found him.”
“That’s not weird at all,” Ethan said, his voice clipped and tight. “Maybe when he fell into the river, he cracked his skull, who knows.”
“I wonder if the injury would be consistent with the size and shape of a hammer.”
The color drained from Ethan’s face. “You had to keep asking questions. Keep digging and digging. If you had stopped, things wouldn’t have gone so far.”
“If someone hadn’t broken into my home and scared the hell out of me at every turn, I wouldn’t have had to keep asking questions,” she shot back.
He snorted. “It was too risky. There was no telling what was left in that house. Your mom…she left so much behind. I had to make sure there wasn’t something inside to tie me to anything.”
The scenery outside the window became more familiar, but she still wasn’t sure where they were headed. But if she could keep him talking, maybe he’d slip up. Give her something she could use against him.
“Like the hammer and shirt?”
He squeezed his eyes shut for a beat before training his gaze back on the road. But this time, she saw sadness and regret. “You don’t understand.”
The defeated tone threw her off, but she kept pushing. “Then make me understand.”
He returned to silence.
“Damn it,” she yelled, slapping the dashboard. “What does it matter? You’re going to kill me anyway. Shouldn’t I at least know why?”
He blinked, as though surprised she had any fight left in her. “I don’t want to kill you.”
She couldn’t help the cackle of laughter that shot out of her mouth. “Really? The gun on your lap says otherwise.”
“I don’t have a choice,” he said on a long sigh. “Everything got out of a hand. From the beginning of this whole mess. Garrison…he was like a brother. I didn’t mean to hit him so hard. I just reacted. And when things had gone too far, we had to finish it. There was too much at stake if we didn’t.”
The confession didn’t surprise her, but one part stuck out. “‘We’? You weren’t the only one who hurt Garrison. Did my uncle help you?”
Ethan worked his jaw back and forth. “We did what we had to do.”
“But why did you have to kill your friend? If you were all so close, why would you and my uncle hurt him? Dump his body in the river?”
He didn’t speak for so long, she thought he’d refuse to answer. Refuse to finally give her the final piece of the puzzle.
“Because we had to save your mom.”
The whispered words erupted in the cab of the truck like a bomb, destroying everything she thought she knew.