Chapter 17
Lori felt the darkness begin to claim her and knew that death was only a few moments away. She had two final thoughts: that she at least had found Ryker to love and be loved by, and then that she was not going to die and lose him. They hadn’t had enough time together.
Annette pulled the typewriter ribbon even tighter, shaking her as she did so. “Just die!” screeched Annette. “Die!”
The woman tightening the noose was unhinged and becoming enraged. Lori had once read that in the face of overwhelming odds and imminent death, those who survived were those who remained calm and thought clearly. Keeping her fingers between the typewriter ribbon and her neck, Lori gave what she thought would be heard as a final sigh escaping her mouth as she released her hold on the ribbon—without removing her fingers from beneath it.
Annette gave her a final shake, and Lori forced her body to remain limp.
“It’s about damn time,” Annette said with satisfaction.
Annette backed away, and Lori could hear her swatting at her clothes as if whisking away dust or dirt. Was she trying to banish the act of murder?
Lori cracked her eyes open to the merest slit possible. Annette moved from behind Lori, back into Lori’s limited vision and close enough that Lori thought she might have a shot at getting away. Holding onto the chair with one hand, Lori kicked out with both feet, connecting with Annette’s stomach, sending her stumbling backwards. Launching herself from the chair, Lori’s feet hit the floor at a dead run, reaching up to rip the typewriter ribbon from her neck. She reached for her cell phone. It must have fallen out when she came out of the chair. Maybe not. Lori vaguely remembered placing it on the shelf next to where she’d been sitting. She ran towards the door at the front of the store as Annette was between her and the door into the alley.
She could see the door had a keyed deadbolt—no escape there. She would never be sure how her brain processed the almost silent click as danger, but she did, and she threw herself aside.
Annette screamed. “Bitch!”
She looked up to see two prongs embedded in the door attached to wires which Lori was pretty sure led back to a taser.
And she has the nerve to call me a bitch? I don’t think so.Lori rolled behind the endcap of one of the store’s displays, looking around for something she could use as a weapon.
Getting to her feet, she peeked over the top of the freestanding display shelf. Annette was between her and her cell phone, as well as between her and freedom. She had no weapon, and Annette seemed unsure what to do next.
Annette spotted her, grabbed what appeared to be a ceremonial dagger and heaved it at her. Lori knew from researching such things that unless you were an expert, it was hard to hit your target and even harder to wound them with it. Looking around, she realized she was between the vintage staplers and the vintage typewriters. While the typewriters might do more damage, they’d be harder to throw any distance with any accuracy.
Grabbing one of the staplers, she briefly admired its beauty before standing up and hefting the thing at Annette. Annette howled in pain as the thing hit her on the shoulder, knocking her back a step before falling and apparently landing on Annette’s foot, making her cry out a second time.
Lori decided it was now or never. She launched herself at Annette, bending a little at the waist and dropping her head forward as she head-butted Annette in the gut. The blow propelled Annette backwards, and she stumbled over a display of antique baskets. Lori all but saw stars and thought she might puke, but she managed to stay on her feet and tried to get to the door to the alley.
Just as she reached it, the door opened, and Jonathon Lockwood stepped through.
“Jonathon, thank god,” Lori said. She might have said more but the expression on his face stopped her cold.
“I thought you were going to dispose of her,” he said, watching as Annette got to her feet.
“You said this would be easy,” cried Annette. “If we disposed of Cobain, you would launch me as your newly discovered protégé.”
Lori didn’t let the ramifications of what Annette said deter her. With Lockwood distracted, Lori managed to push past him. She almost had the doorknob within her grasp, when his large, boney, and surprisingly strong hand settled on her shoulder.
“I don’t think so,” Lockwood sneered.
Running purely on instinct and fear turned into adrenaline, Lori brought her head back sharply, making hard contact with Lockwood’s face. His hand fell away as he yowled in pain.
This time as she reached for the doorknob, someone rattled the door from the other side.
“Lori!” Ryker called from the other side as he hit it with his shoulder, trying to crash through, but failing to do so. The strength and power behind the hit rattled the door itself and the door jamb, but didn’t allow him to break in.
“Fuck!” snarled Lockwood, pulling a gun from his pocket.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lockwood take aim at the door.
“Gun,” Lori screamed at the top of her lungs as she flung herself out of the way before bullets riddled the door. Lori screamed again; this time at Lockwood as she charged at him. “No!”
Lockwood saw her coming too late to prevent her from knocking the gun away. He was standing close to a glass case and smashed the glass with an agate bookend. Dropping the bookend, he reached into the case and grabbed another knife, fisting Lori’s hair and dragging her close. Lori twisted, ignoring the pain, and dug in with her heels. She pushed back, knocking over various displays as she backpedaled, and managed to just stay out of range of his knife.
Annette skittered behind him, her eyes showing the panic she had to be feeling. The authorities were closing in and their entire scheme was falling down around their ears.
He was gaining ground as the door burst inward, and Ryker hurled himself at Lockwood, tackling him, knocking the knife from his hand, and taking him down hard. Annette stumbled backwards to keep herself out of the fray. Lockwood rolled out of Ryker’s grasp, and Lori watched in a kind of slow-motion horror as Lockwood reached for the gun she had knocked away and brought it to bear on Ryker.
“No!” Lori screamed as she leaped towards Lockwood’s outstretched arms and managed to misdirect the gun from its intended target. She rolled away from him and reached out to pull Annette down.
Lori saw Ryker’s body jerk from the impact of hot lead, but thankfully it was a shoulder wound. He wouldn’t be slinging her around for a while. In the distance, they could hear sirens coming from the other end of town.
She rushed to Ryker’s side, grabbing vintage tea towels from a display along the way and pressing them into the wound.
Sitting up, Ryker moved her, so his body was between her and the threat. “It’s over. There’s more than one siren, and I suspect the MCU is the one who sent them.”
“What do we do?” cried Annette as she joined Lockwood, who was now sitting up as well. Annette was clasping her sore shoulder where the heavy antique stapler had hit her.
“We give up. I suggest we say absolutely nothing and ensure that our attorneys are working together to provide us with a successful co-defense.”
“It was you, wasn’t it?” said Lori to Lockwood. “You’re the one I saw strangle Cobain.”
“You don’t really expect me to answer that, do you?” he drawled as the police burst into the shop both from the open alley door and after smashing in the front door with a battering ram.
“McKay?” called Thorn Wilder.
“We’re over here,” answered Lori. “We’re going to need an ambulance. Ryker’s been shot.”
“Not bad, McKay. I don’t know that I would have gotten shot to get her to take me in her arms, but hey, to each his own.”
“Shut up Wilder. Not all of us have our girl just fall into our laps, so to speak.”
He nodded towards Lori’s head. “What happened to you? Did you head-butt someone?”
“Yeah, after Annette over there tried to strangle me with a vintage typewriter ribbon. It’s around here somewhere. It’s one of the ones on the ground. It’ll have my DNA as well as Annette’s, as we both handled several.”
“Not to worry, Lori, our people will figure it out,” Thorn assured her.
“Middleton is handcuffed up at the hotel. An author named Ezra Kane has him…”
“Yep, we already dispatched people to the hotel to pick up Middleton. MCU will be taking custody of all three of them as well as the guy that got murdered. Kenny with our forensics team said the morgue technician was more than happy to give him up. This can all wait. We need to get both of you to the hospital. Jess, Fiona, Christie, and Slade are all en route.”
“How’d you manage that?” asked Lori.
“Money talks,” laughed Thorn.
The paramedics tried to split them up, but neither Ryker nor Lori were having any of that. Trying to get Ryker to lie down while she sat up had been a sticking point.
“You need to lie down. The worst they’re worried about with me is a concussion, and they’ll want me to stay awake. That’s easier to do if I’m sitting up.”
As Ryker had pointed out, Bleak Ridge wasn’t all that big, so the ride in the paramedics’ vehicle didn’t take long. It didn’t matter, she held Ryker’s hand the entire way. Once they were at the hospital they were separated while the doctors determined she only had a bump on her head. Ryker was a bit more difficult. He refused to have the bullet removed surgically, insisting on a local and having the ER doctor dig the damn thing out.
“You’re being a jackass, McKay,” said Thorn.
Lori could hear them as only a curtain separated them.
“You should listen to your friend, Mr. McKay,” said the doctor.
“Either you take it out here with a local, or I’ll have myself discharged AMA and have my regular doctor do it tomorrow. Your choice.”
“You should know,” Thorn said to the doctor, “this guy once had bullets and shrapnel pulled from his legs with a local.”
Lori flung open the curtain and hopped to her feet. “Seriously? Are you some kind of masochist?”
“First,” said Ryker, “sit down. Second, Thorn will vouch for this. My choices were a derelict local surgeon who cared more about his outlawed Mercedes than he did for his patients, or one of the army medics that I knew and trusted.”
“Said army medic’s little brother being one of the guys that Ryker saved,” added Thorn.
“Lori? Lori?” Jessica breezed in before turning to Ryker. “Jesus, McKay, you look like shit.”
The ER doctor grabbed the curtain and tried to pull it shut. Lori stopped him. “No way. If he’s doing this here, then I’m going to be with him.”
“Told you,” said Fiona as she strolled in with Christie. In answer to Lori’s quirked eyebrow, Fiona continued, “Slade has gone to the local cop shop. He sent someone to unlock Middleton.”
Christie winced when she saw Ryker’s shoulder. “That’s gonna leave a mark. But according to Fi, Lori will be happy to play slutty nurse and kiss it to make it all better.” They all turned to look at her. “What? We all know it’s true. We ladies are just more willing to say it out loud. You boys should know murder isn’t the only thing we talk about at our meetings. The last one got pretty raucous. And we probably know far more about Slade and Thorn’s sexual exploits and predilections than they’d like us to.” She looked between Lori and Ryker. “Now, it looks like I’ll be the only one living vicariously through my friends. Oh well, it sucks to get old.”
Lori, Jessica, and Fiona all found things to throw at their friend, who dodged or batted them away, laughing.
“Would you people mind giving me a little privacy so I can get this bullet out?” said the doctor with a pained expression.
Lori glanced at her friends and grinned. “Why, yes, yes we would.”
Thorn groaned as he placed his hand on Ryker’s other shoulder. “I don’t know whether to offer you my congratulations or condolences, but welcome to the club.”
“You don’t know that there’s anything serious going on,” scolded Jessica.
“Oh, but I do. He’s got that hopelessly in love with one of you lunatics look on his face. I’d recognize it anywhere,” he said, turning from Ryker and taking Jessica into his arms. “I see it every single morning when I look in the mirror.”
The doctor, realizing he wasn’t going to get the privacy he requested, shot Ryker’s shoulder full of local anesthetic and went digging for the bullet. Ryker, for the most part, was incredibly stoic—or the local he was given was pretty damn strong. Lori didn’t really care. All she cared about was that he was going to be fine, she would get to take him home, and her friends were gathered around her.
“So, does anybody know why Cobain was killed?” asked Christie.
“Other than he was an arrogant prick?” answered Jessica.
“Enough,” Thorn growled at her.
“What? He was. I’m sure people will come up with another excuse, but at the end of the day he was a bastard. His publicist is going to have to pay actors to show up as mourners.”
Fiona laughed. “She isn’t wrong.”
“I think it had to do with ghostwriting…” started Lori.
“It did indeed,” said Slade as he swept in to join them and pulled his wife into his embrace, kissing her soundly.
“So, who cracked first? It was Middleton, wasn’t it?” asked Ryker.
Slade nodded. “Yep. Annette had been ghostwriting for Cobain for years. He did less and less work as the years went by and collected more and more money. Towards the end, he was just supplying Annette with concepts—just a couple of paragraphs—that Annette then turned into bestsellers. Lockwood figured it out and went to Annette with a scheme—they would take out Cobain, put out a final Cobain novel co-written by Annette.”
“Then, let me guess,” said Lori, “Lockwood would introduce Annette as his new protégé, thus avoiding having to abide by Cobain’s deal with his publisher.”
“Bingo,” said Slade.
“How did Middleton get mixed up in it?” asked Ryker.
“Lori really did put the fly in the ointment. Lockwood strangled Cobain down on the dock…”
“Why a vintage typewriter ribbon?” asked Christie.
“He didn’t mean to leave it behind. He meant to keep it as insurance to keep Annette in line. I doubt very much he planned to pay Annette much more than Cobain did. The original plan had been to dispose of Cobain’s body somewhere deep in the ocean where it would never be found. Lockwood had planned for Cobain just to disappear. That way if they ever needed him, they could resurrect him.”
“That’s not half bad as plot devices go,” said Jessica.
“Middleton’s only crime was in helping to cover it up. He was trying to protect Annette. I’m not sure until tonight he realized Lockwood was even involved, or if he did know, I’m pretty sure he thought it was only peripherally. I still think Middleton’s a schmuck, but I do think he did it because he had feelings for Annette.”
When the doctor finally released them—against medical advice in Ryker’s case—they were able to get three rooms at the Bleak Ridge Hotel: Lori’s and two others. The rooms that had been assigned to Lockwood and Cobain were being processed by MCU. Otherwise, the inn was full, so Ryker and Lori headed back to his house.