Chapter Twenty-Two
Twenty-Two
Mendocino, California
I killed them all.
This was exactly the reaction Ronan had been fearing. The reaction Sara Lambert had predicted, which was why she’d called him and not Elle.
Sara hadn’t wanted Elle to be alone when she learned the truth.
He thought Elle had been well on her way to figuring it out on her own, though. But he’d hastened the realization because they were running out of time.
This man didn’t just hate a bounty hunter.
He hated Elle.
All the times they’d told her that it wasn’t personal, that this guy would have hated anyone who’d retrieved a family member or loved one…
They’d been wrong.
This was as personal as it got.
And he was escalating.
Unraveling.
“You did not kill them,” he said fiercely. “You are not responsible. Ashton Dempsey is responsible. Not you.”
She closed her eyes, tears seeping from beneath her eyelids. “Ronan.”
It was a whispered plea, but for what he wasn’t sure. He did, however, know what he needed to do. Without another thought, he rose, gathered her in his arms, and held her tight.
“Elle,” he murmured, kissing the top of her head, Howard be damned. This woman needed him and he wasn’t walking away. Her arms wound around his waist and she held on, saying nothing more.
He saw movement from the corner of his eye. Alexis stood in the kitchen doorway wearing a pair of Hello Kitty pajamas. Her hand covered her mouth and she looked as helpless as he felt.
If she hadn’t heard everything, she’d heard enough.
“I’ve got her,” he said quietly. “You go back to sleep.”
She gave him an unsteady nod and retreated.
Ronan turned Elle toward the living room. He drew her down to the sofa to sit at his side before pulling her close once again.
She didn’t curse or scream or even cry loudly. He kind of wished she would, but her despair was utterly silent, her tears soaking his shirt.
He kissed the top of her head again, simply holding her while she cried. Finally the tears seemed to slow, but he continued to hold her, continued to drop kisses to her pretty auburn hair.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I am, too, but only for your pain. Not for this.”
“I have a headache.”
“I bet you do. I’ll get you some ibuprofen.”
“Not yet.” She clutched a handful of his shirt, just as she’d done the night he’d held her on the bluff. “Stay. Please.”
“I will.” He tipped her head up and winced at the sight of her face, her eyes swollen and red.
“I must look like a mess.”
“You’re beautiful.”
She shook her head, and he wasn’t sure if she was denying his compliment or if she hadn’t even heard it through the chaos she was dealing with.
That was okay. He’d tell her again later, when she was ready to listen.
“What am I going to do? I can never make amends for eleven people. I can’t bring them back. I can never make it up to their families. What do I do?”
“You don’t have to do anything, Elle, because you did not cause this. You are a victim, too, just like you were the night of the accident.”
“And I’ll be the only one who walks away,” she said quietly. “Again.”
“Then walk to me. I’ll keep you safe until you’re ready to stand on your own again.”
Her eyes lost that glazed, unfocused look and he could tell she was back with him again. “Ronan, what are we doing here?”
He went for honesty and hoped she felt the same way. “I think we’re starting something.”
“I’m a bad bet. You should run, not walk.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to keep you safe and, once this is over, I’m taking you out to dinner on a real date. Then I’ll kiss you, because I’ve wanted to do that for a long time, too.”
Too many emotions flickered through her brown eyes. Denial, fear, sadness. But also hope. And desire.
“Your job.”
“Won’t be an issue when we’ve put him away forever.”
“I live in San Francisco.”
“We can figure that out.”
She swallowed hard. “What am I going to do?” she asked again.
“Now or later?”
“Both.”
“Now you’re going to sit here with me and sleep. When the sun comes up, we’ll make a plan to catch Ashton Dempsey.”
She nodded and laid her head against his chest. “How did you know to come tonight? How did you know who he was?”
“I got a call from Sara.”
Her head jerked up, eyes wide. “What?”
“She made me promise not to ask how she’d gotten the information,” he said dryly.
“That sounds accurate. What did she say?”
“She somehow got access to surveillance footage taken at the San Francisco airport. She figured that if he was committing murders in other states but always coming back to San Francisco to bug your jacket, he might have flown into SFO. We’d started to search the airports ourselves, but Sara was faster.
Her digital agility and her access to the airport’s surveillance is more than a little disturbing, I’m not gonna lie. ”
“Which is why she made you promise not to ask. What did she find?”
“She found Ashton exiting the San Francisco airport from a flight originating in Sarasota four weeks ago, on January eighth.”
“The day after we took the Miller job.”
“That’s what she said. They then compared his photo to the Florida DMV database.” He paused. “I really want to know how she accessed that database and what else she can do.”
“You really don’t want to know. Is this going to be a problem for you? Explaining to your boss how you got information?”
“No, because I’m not going to mention Sara. I told him I got an anonymous tip with Dempsey’s name and that when I saw you, you’d also figured it out. You were almost there anyway after talking to that lady. Who was she?”
“Myrna works the night shift at the hotel where Orrin and I stayed in Bakersfield.”
“The final murder before ours.”
“Yes. Ashton stayed in our hotel.” She shuddered. “I found him on the body cam footage coming out right behind us when we checked out of the hotel after returning the skipper we’d found. Myrna is chatty and I fibbed to get her to tell me his name.”
He ran a hand over her hair. She’d taken the ponytail down and it fell past her shoulders. He liked it this way.
“You can come clean to her once we catch him and thank her for her service.”
Elle rested her head on his chest, and his heart began to beat a little faster. This was…nice. Comfortable. He could get used to this very quickly, sitting with her. Holding her like this.
“Myrna would like that. So would I. I have so many questions about Ashton. Why did he say he forgave me if he didn’t? I can understand why he’d hate me, but to go to this amount of effort? Why not just kill me and be done with it?”
His heart clenched at the notion of her dead at the hands of Ashton Dempsey. “I don’t know. Do you still have the contact information on the aunt? We can call her and ask what she knows about his state of mind.”
“I do. We texted back and forth for a while after my visit to his hospital room. Updates on Ashton’s recovery, that kind of thing.
He’d been accepted to Notre Dame with a football scholarship before the accident, so I offered to pay for his tuition.
” She glanced up at him. “I’d been planning to divorce my husband before the accident, but we were still legally married at the time of his death and I received a very generous inheritance. ”
Ronan was struck once again by her kindness. “Ashton didn’t accept it?”
“No. His aunt said he’d changed his plans and would now be attending college in Florida, where he’d have access to his doctors and physical therapists.
He had broken bones and a traumatic brain injury.
His face was cut up, a real mess, so the drastic plastic surgery makes sense.
Anyway, his aunt gently requested I stop contacting her because interference wasn’t helpful to his recovery.
So I occasionally checked her Facebook where she was chronicling his recovery.
She always posted only text, never pictures.
I assumed that was to protect his privacy, or maybe because his face was scarred.
The last post I read said that he’d started college at USF in Sarasota.
That made me feel better. His life was going on.
I really thought everything was settled for good when I got that letter from Ashton.
I wonder if things might be different if I hadn’t bowed to her wishes. ”
“At the time, that was probably the best for everyone. As for the TBI, I know a guy who had one. Changed his personality. Before his TBI, he’d been a sweet gentle giant.
Afterward he was an angry murder machine.
He ended up killing his wife. He’s in prison getting psychiatric help.
TBIs can radically change a person’s ability to regulate their impulses and emotions. ”
“I know. I read up on it after the accident. Still, I never dreamed he’d do all this. Not in a million years.”
“If you’re going to place any blame, put it at your late husband’s feet. It was his drunken abuse that set off this chain of events.”
“That’s what all my friends said, but that was when it was only three people dead, including Todd.”
“It’s still true.”
She was quiet for a moment. “I wonder if this was precipitated by the photo with the child and the fire. He spent weeks in the hospital, then months in rehab, and there I was, getting all the attention for saving a child from a burning building.”
“The timing makes sense. He approached you for the first time soon after you went viral.”
“The way he looked at me makes sense now. It was like he wanted me to say something, like he wanted me to know him. But I didn’t recognize him. That must have made him so angry with me. I ruined his life and I didn’t even remember him.”
“First, you didn’t ruin his life. Second, he looks so different now. You couldn’t have known.”
“I know. His face was sliced up by broken glass in the accident and some of the bones in his face were crushed. Whoever did his plastic surgery was very skilled. Plus, he’s a little older. He’s not a seventeen-year-old kid anymore.”