CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Briar Lane held its breath.
Connor’s SUV sat dark behind them, engine ticking softly.
Selena moved beside him along the edge of Bradley Atkins’s yard, one hand near her weapon, eyes fixed on the brick house and the shadows beyond it.
The porch light burned above the front door.
Curtains glowed at the edges. Somewhere inside, a television murmured to an empty room.
Then a shape moved behind the house.
Selena raised one hand.
Connor stopped at once.
At the far side of the property, beyond a strip of lawn and a line of low shrubs, Renee Beaumont walked toward the tree line with a pistol in her right hand.
Bradley Atkins walked ahead of her.
His white shirt was untucked. One sleeve hung loose at his wrist. Both hands were raised shoulder-high, palms open. His head kept turning, but Renee stayed a few feet behind him, gun steady, her pace calm and unhurried.
The way someone moved after panic had burned itself out.
The way someone moved when they had done this before.
Selena drew her gun. “Renee Beaumont. FBI! Stop where you are.”
Renee stopped.
Bradley froze, breath coming hard enough for Selena to hear across the yard.
Connor drew, too, his weapon aimed low but ready. “Bradley, stay still.”
Renee turned her head slightly, enough to see them without taking the gun off Bradley. Her gray hair had loosened around her face. In the porch light and moonlight, the yellow cardigan looked almost white.
“Agent Raven,” Renee said. “Sheriff Chase. You came quickly.”
“Put the gun down,” Selena said.
“I don’t think I can do that. Oh, this is fun!”
There was an unhinged look in her eyes.
“You can put the gun down. Place it on the grass and step away.”
Renee gave a small, disappointed smile. “You’re very formal.”
“No sudden moves.”
Bradley’s voice cracked. “Please. Please, I didn’t do anything.”
Renee’s eyes did not leave Selena. “They always say that.”
“Renee,” Connor said. “Let him walk toward us.”
“No.”
“He’s not worth dying over.”
That drew Renee’s attention. Her face changed by inches, the polite mask tightening into something cold and offended.
“Not worth dying over,” she repeated. “That’s what men always think the harm is worth. Nothing. A silly little mistake. A weakness. A private matter.”
Selena shifted one step to her left, opening a cleaner angle and drawing Renee’s focus away from Connor. “Bradley, don’t move unless I tell you.”
Bradley whimpered. “Okay.”
Renee looked at him with soft irritation. “You were so confident in your living room.”
“I don’t know what you want.”
“You know.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Your wife Sheila knows,” Renee said. “She knows enough to step back from you in her own house. She sleeps upstairs as we speak, trying to escape from your betrayal.”
Selena watched the gun. Renee’s finger rested along the trigger guard, not fully inside it. Controlled. Practiced. Not a woman waving a weapon in panic.
“Renee,” Selena said, “how did you find out about Bradley?”
“People talk.”
“Melania’s?”
A tiny flicker moved across Renee’s face.
Selena kept her voice even. “You heard women talking about Sheila? Sandra told us.”
“They were laughing with pain in their mouths.”
“They were gossiping, Renee,” Connor said.
“Gossip has more truth to it than you think.”
Connor took half a step forward. “You murdered Warren Holt because he was having an affair, didn’t you?”
Renee’s gun shifted by a fraction.
Selena said, “Connor.”
His jaw worked, but he stopped.
Renee looked at him now. “Warren was cruel. He made Sandra feel small for years. Then he humiliated her again, as if leaving her hadn’t been enough.
I never figured out who his bit on the side was.
But I knew she existed. Sandra had convinced me of that much.
I tricked him into meeting me, telling him I was going to expose him, then finished him off. ”
“And Victor?” Selena asked. “You sneaked out from Sandra’s while she was asleep, didn’t you?”
“There was no other way. Victor lied to Marlene until she doubted her own mind. I watched it happening from afar. Janet told me first. You mustn’t blame her. Men are predators. They prey on the hurt. She would talk and then apologize for talking. Victor was the one to blame for it all.”
Bradley made a strangled sound. “Lady, please, I don’t even know you. What’s this got to do with me?”
“No,” Renee said. “You don’t know me. But I know your kind. And that’s enough to know what to do with you!”
Selena edged another step closer. The distance between them was still too much. Fifteen yards, maybe. Renee could fire before Selena reached her. Connor could shoot, but Bradley stood in the wrong place, and Renee’s body was half shielded by him.
Selena softened her voice. “Renee, I know this is really about your husband Gary. He never got the chance to confess his affair to you. I understand what betrayal can do to a person when they’re on the wrong end of it.”
Renee smiled sadly. “Do you?”
“Yes.”
Connor glanced at Selena, but she did not look at him.
“When I was younger,” Selena said, “I thought someone had betrayed me. I thought he’d been unfaithful.”
Connor’s face tightened in her peripheral vision.
Renee’s eyes sharpened. “Thought?”
“I didn’t know everything. I knew enough to hurt. Enough to make a story in my head and live inside it, whether it was true or not. I never got to the truth, and it nearly killed me.”
Connor said nothing.
Bradley swallowed loudly. Sweat ran down the side of his face.
Selena kept going, voice low and steady.
“That kind of suspicion changes the room you’re in.
It changes how a person breathes beside you.
Every late call becomes proof. Every silence becomes proof.
You get used to the pain. You see every little change of behavior as more proof that he’s with someone else. ”
Renee’s expression shifted. For the first time, something like recognition moved beneath the calm.
“Then you know,” Renee said.
“I know it can make you think things. Weird, angry, vengeful things, even when you don’t have definitive proof beyond hearsay.”
Renee’s hand tightened on the gun.
Selena stopped moving.
“You’re doing it now,” Selena said. “With Bradley. With Sheila. You don’t know their marriage.”
“I saw enough.”
“You saw a wife step away from her husband. You heard gossip in a diner. That’s not enough to kill a man.”
“It’s enough to protect her.”
“No. It’s enough to ask questions. It’s enough to tell Sheila what you heard. It isn’t enough for this or breaking the law.”
Renee’s mouth trembled once, then settled.
“Law did nothing for Sandra,” she said. “Nothing for Marlene. Nothing for me.”
“Gary’s death was not justice,” Selena said. “He died before you could confront him. Then what was left? Anger and vengeance burning a hole in you until you couldn’t take any more.”
Renee’s gaze flicked to her, fast and sharp. “Gary was mine. He… he shouldn’t have done what he did.”
Silence spread across the lawn.
In the house, the television laugh track rose and fell behind the curtains.
Renee’s face emptied of apology. “Gary was going to make me live with the insult. Every day. Every room. Then he had the audacity to die before I could show him how much he’d hurt me!”
Connor’s grip tightened around his gun.
Selena felt the confession land, but there was no room to react to it. Not yet.
Bradley whispered, “Please.”
Renee looked back at him. “Did Sheila ask you to stop seeing the other woman?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I swear.” Bradley looked chalk white.
Renee shook her head. “You don’t even know how to tell the truth with death looking at you. None of you cheaters do!”
Connor moved another inch forward.
Renee saw it.
Her eyes shifted to him, and something in her expression hardened into purpose.
“You,” she said.
Connor stopped.
Selena’s stomach dropped.
Renee turned the pistol away from Bradley and aimed at Connor.
“Renee,” Selena said.
“You hurt Selena, too.”
Connor kept his weapon raised, his face pale but steady. “Put the gun down.”
“It’s you she was talking about. Isn’t it? You were an unfaithful husband.”
“That has nothing to do with any of this,” Selena said.
“No. Men always say that. It’s nothing. Private. Complicated. None of your business.” Renee’s voice stayed calm, which made it worse. “You leave wreckage and call it history.”
Selena’s gun centered on Renee. “Lower the weapon.”
Connor almost had the shot, but Selena was in his line of fire, and one pull of the trigger could send both women down.
A night breeze washed over them all.
“I can’t have my Gary,” Renee sobbed. “But I can make them all pay like he should have!”
Renee’s finger moved into the trigger guard.
Selena lunged.
The grass slipped under her first step. Pain flashed through the back of her head, but she drove forward anyway. Renee swung the gun toward her.
Connor shouted, “Selena!”
Selena hit Renee at the waist.
The gun fired.
The crack split the yard. Bark spat from a tree behind Connor, leaves jumping where the bullet struck.
Selena and Renee hit the ground together, rolling through damp grass and fallen twigs.
Renee was stronger than she looked, all wiry resistance and bone.
The pistol scraped against Selena’s forearm as both fought for it.
Selena drove her knee into Renee’s hip and caught the older woman’s wrist with both hands.
“Drop it.”
Renee’s teeth clenched.
“Drop. It.”
Connor’s footsteps pounded nearby. Bradley cried out behind them. Selena twisted Renee’s wrist hard against the ground. The pistol came loose.
Connor kicked it away, then grabbed Bradley by the collar and hauled him back.
“Move,” Connor snapped. “Get behind the SUV.”
Bradley stumbled, then ran across the yard with Connor guiding him by the arm.
Selena rolled Renee onto her front and pinned one wrist between her shoulder blades. Renee did not fight now. No screaming. No sobbing. No frantic plea. Her body had gone slack beneath Selena’s knee, as if the fired shot had emptied the last of the motion from her.
Selena pulled cuffs from her belt and secured Renee’s wrists.
“Renee Beaumont, you’re under arrest for the murders of Warren Holt and Victor Schmidt.”
Renee’s cheek rested against the grass. Her eyes were open, fixed on nothing Selena could see.
“You have the right to remain silent,” Selena said, breath rough in her throat. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney.”
Connor returned, weapon still in hand but lowered. “Bradley’s clear.”
Selena finished reading Renee her rights and stood, pulling Renee with her. For a moment, they faced each other in the yard. Renee’s cardigan was smeared with grass. A small scratch ran along her cheek. The composure had returned to her face, but it looked flatter now.
“Why Bradley?” Selena asked.
Renee looked toward the house.
A woman stood at the back door.
Sheila Atkins. One hand pressed to her mouth. Eyes wide. Barefoot on the threshold.
Bradley called her name from near Connor’s SUV, but Sheila did not move toward him.
Renee watched the wife instead.
“Those women deserved better than what their husbands were doing to them,” Renee said.
No tears followed.
Only that one sentence, offered with terrible certainty.
Selena guided her toward the front of the house as Arnold’s cruiser turned onto Briar Lane with its lights off until the last second. A second cruiser followed. Doors opened. Deputies moved fast, voices low, weapons checked and lowered when Connor signaled the scene was secure.
Bradley sat on the curb with his head between his hands.
Sheila stood wrapped in a blanket Arnold must have taken from his trunk, though she refused to sit near her husband.
She had heard too much from Renee. Connor spoke to both of them separately.
Selena noticed that. Even now, even with Renee cuffed, the damage inside that house had not become simple.
Nothing about betrayal ever was.
Renee said nothing while Selena placed her in the back of the cruiser. Nothing while Arnold read the arrest notation into the radio. Nothing while Connor stood nearby, looking at Selena as if he wanted to ask whether she was hurt and knew better than to do it in front of everyone.
Selena kept her hands busy.
Evidence secured. Weapon location marked. Bradley and Sheila separated for statements. Backup assigned to Renee for transport. Connor spoke with Arnold. Selena gave instructions, signed the first custody form, and watched the pistol being photographed near the edge of the yard.
Work first.
Feelings later.
Only when the scene had settled enough for Connor to take over did Selena return to her car. The dressing on her head pulsed under her hair. Grass stained one knee of her trousers. Her forearm burned where the pistol had scraped it.
Connor approached before she opened the door.
“You all right?”
“Yes.”
“You did well. I’m glad you came back.”
Selena looked at him.
He seemed to hear himself. His mouth tightened, and he nodded once as if agreeing with himself.
“Very glad,” he said.
Neither of them smiled.
“Let’s get back, Connor.”
They moved over to his SUV and got in without saying a word to each other.
The drive back to the sheriff’s department passed through quiet streets and pockets of porch light. Ahead, Arnold’s cruiser carried Renee Beaumont toward a cell, the woman who had turned suspected betrayals into death and called it protection.
At a stop sign, Selena watched the nocturnal quiet of Elmsview town.
Renee had been so certain.
Certain Gary had humiliated her. Certain Sandra needed justice.
Certain Marlene needed saving. Certain Sheila Atkins stood at the edge of the same pit even though she had never met her.
One suspicion had become a map. One hurt had become a rule.
From there, Renee had built an entire catastrophe and filled it with other people’s bodies.
Selena looked for a moment at Connor. He didn’t seem to notice.
Once, she had been certain, too. Certainty had carried her out of Harlan County, away from a marriage she could no longer bear to stand inside.
Maybe she had been right. Maybe she had only been hurt enough to stop caring about the difference.
Somewhere deep down, she still wanted the answers from her past. But those would have to wait for another day.
Connor waited for a moment as the light turned green.
Selena breathed once, then let the question stay unanswered, for now, as they drove on into the night.