Chapter Thirty-One
Deadly Secrets
Willow
“What in tarnation is wrong with you?” Dale demanded after Willow snapped at him for tracking dirt into the house.
They had an endless battle keeping the dust level low, and they both did their part. Never had Willow been moody when it came to something as small as a bit of dirt.
“I’m sorry,” she said, rubbing her temple. “Headache. It won’t leave me alone.”
She did have a headache, but it was still a lie, and she couldn’t look at Dale when she said it.
He hmphed, and internally she grimaced. If Wallard told the people in town about her, it would harm Dale and the respect he was given.
He would be ostracized because of her past. She could even imagine Lucia and how she would feel knowing that Dale brought a murderer to a wedding party who then hung out with Sofia, her niece throughout the evening.
Were there laws about working for the sheriff’s department and inviting ex-cons to your party?
Willow even worried about Louisa and Roger.
They were nice people who would be placed in a difficult situation once Willow’s past was brought into the open.
Willow knew Wallard wasn’t interested in a date.
He wanted so much more. It made her palms sweat when she thought about everything Dale would lose because of her past. Thoughts of her father filled her mind.
A psychologist in prison had explained that she might never remember what happened that day because the brain had ways of protecting itself that modern medicine still did not understand.
There had been so many psychologists poking around in her brain back then. Most had contracts with the prison and saw far too many inmates. Three visits with the same person were the maximum before they moved to better pay and less depressing patients.
The thought of killing Deputy Wallard flitted through her head. For the first time, she truly thought she was the monster painted in the press that dogged her through the trial and then her grandmother afterward.
There was something deeply wrong with the deputy, but there was also something wrong with Willow. Why couldn’t he see it? The way he puffed out his chest and admired his own reflection gave her the answer. His arrogance led him, and he didn’t see the evil she kept locked tightly within herself.
She sent the deputy a text that night after Dale went to bed.
Willow: I’ll go to dinner with you.
Wallard: When?
Willow: Tomorrow. I’ll meet you in Show Low.
Wallard: Little Mormon Lake Road that goes to Whipple Lake. We’ll take my truck from there. See you at 4.
Willow looked up the location on her phone. The turnoff was before the airport on Highway 60. She’d seen the road but had never turned onto it. Her stomach clenched tightly, and she felt sick.
This was about control. Wallard knew it, and she knew it. Once he had her in his truck, he was the one in charge.
Sleep eluded her that night, but that was okay. If she didn’t fall asleep, the nightmares couldn’t haunt her.
“Sofia asked me to go to a movie with her in Show Low and then out to dinner tonight,” she told Dale while straightening the shelves that held her refinishing supplies.
He didn’t respond right away, and she finally looked at him.
“I think that’s great,” he said, though his voice sounded strange, and his eyes searched hers.
She was a horrible liar, and she quickly turned back to the shelves.
She wasn’t sure why Wallard wanted to meet so early, but there was little she could do.
She showered and began preparing an hour later.
Dale would think it strange if she simply wore jeans and a T-shirt, but it was hard to get dressed in something nice for Wallard.
She settled on jeans and a blouse. She used no makeup, but spent time in the bathroom so Dale would think she was doing something to make herself presentable.
With solar power, a blow dryer on the heat setting was out of the question. Using it simply as a blower meant it took longer, but she’d grown accustomed to living off grid. Once it was dry, she curled the ends with shaking hands and left it loose.
She said goodbye to Dale, barely glancing at him, and walked out to her truck. It was an hour’s drive to Show Low, after she left the ranch’s dirt road. Her hands shook on the wheel and turned white. Her fingers cramped before she loosened them. Tears threatened, but she refused to cry.
She’d made her decision, and she wasn’t turning back now.