Blood Ties (34 page)

Th

e fi nal blow knocked him backwards. I didn’t need an up close and personal look at the bits and pieces litter-ing the terrain; Bobby’s head had all but exploded upon 362

impact. I’d seen it happen once before. Not on a human, however.

Th

e sick feeling I expected never came.

Meredith tossed the bow aside before she fell to her knees. When she faced me, she had that same deer-in-the-crosshairs look I witnessed when I’d killed my fi rst and only buck. Body wracked with convulsions, she wrapped her arms around her up-drawn knees and rocked back and forth, her sobs lost in the black void of the forest. Nothing would ever fi ll the blackened section of her heart. But, maybe now she’d heal.

Finally, I said, “Meredith. You need to cut me loose.”

She stopped rocking to raise her tear-stained face toward me. “Are you going to turn me in?”

I shook my head.

She crawled closer, pulling out a switchblade. She studied it with confusion and I tamped down on renewed fear.

Meredith wouldn’t hurt me. I’d given her the only thing she’d ever wanted: justice for the unjust death of her sister.

Behind the pine I heard sawing sounds and my legs broke free fi rst. “I’m not sorry,” she said.

“I

know.”

“I followed you because I knew you’d fi nd him. No matter what.”

Th

e jerking motion against my hips stopped and her voice became a rattled whisper.

“Th

ank you.”

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My hands broke free to the sensation of pins and needles and raw pain. “How did you know?”

“I heard them in the church. Him. Bobby.”

She pointed to the crumpled form in front of us.

“And Father Tim. Arguing. Father Tim asked him if he killed Sam and Shelley. Bobby didn’t deny it. Said he was doing them all a favor. Father Tim threatened to call the police. Bobby picked him up and tossed him off the balcony, right onto the pews below.”

I angled toward her face, but couldn’t see anything beyond the tree bark and golden rivulets of pine sap. “You saw this happen? Why didn’t you call 911?”

“Th

e drop was at least twenty feet, so I knew Father Tim was dead. I fi gured I would be too, if I gave myself away.”

“What were you doing in the church in the fi rst place?”

My shoulders were blessedly free and I slowly inched to the ground.

“He’d counseled Sam. I snuck into his offi ce, thinking

I’d fi nd a fi le or something. Th

en, I saw her rosary hanging

on the back wall. I thought Father Tim had killed her and kept her rosary as a trophy, like those serial killers on TV.

Th

en, I heard them arguing.”

She scowled at Bobby’s body.

“Am I gonna go to jail?”

Juvenile detention would ruin Meredith. She didn’t pose a danger to society. Th

e real menace to society was

drawing fl ies and an interesting circle of buzzards overhead.

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Meredith needed a chance at a normal life and it was within my power to give it to her. “Not if I can help it.”

“But . . .”

“You trust me, right?”

She

nodded.

“So, when the cops get here, let me do the talking, all right? Promise?”

She nodded again, and then lowered her head until her hair brushed the dead spots on the forest fl oor like pale strands of wheat.

“Good. Here’s what we’re going to do.” I explained it, drilled her, and when I was satisfi ed she knew her part, sent her up the road to fl ag down a car.

I removed my ripped T-shirt and wiped her prints off my bow.

Th

e wail of sirens, footfalls destroying underbrush, loud male voices; I heard it all, yet I heard nothing. Police swarmed from every direction. I didn’t move until I saw the one thing that set my feet to running.

Kevin.

I vaguely remembered shouldering Lilly aside as I limped toward him, throwing my bleeding and battered body right into his widespread arms.

Deputy Brownell from the Pennington County Sheriff ’s Department interviewed me at the hospital while a nurse tended my wounds. Th

e ligature marks on my arms

throbbed, made worse when they picked fi bers out of the open lesions with what felt like a wire scrub brush.

Kevin assured me the torturous device was an ordinary pair of tweezers. I didn’t buy it, but was glad he stayed by my side, holding my hand through the excruciating pain.

I’d have scars. Th

e invisible ones were ten times worse than those requiring sutures.

Meredith and I were questioned separately. She’d backed up my story claiming I’d been tied to the tree and she freed me just as Bobby re-entered the clearing. No one doubted it was self-defense. No one questioned whether I’d been responsible for the kill shots.

I hadn’t asked Meredith if she’d ever picked up a bow 366

before she aimed one at Bobby. Part of me didn’t want to know. I chalked it up to an adrenaline surge because I knew it wasn’t about skill. It was about guts. And Meredith Friel had plenty. She’d had no choice; she had nothing else to lose.

I heard about Meredith’s statement detailing her secret visit to St. Augustine’s secondhand. Her removal of Samantha’s rosary and the fact she hadn’t reported Father Tim’s murder were overlooked when Deputy Brownell called Sergeant Schneider of the Rapid City Police Department and they tactfully pointed out to the powers-that-be she’d saved my life. And, been the only witness to Bobby and Tim’s enlightening conversation.

But, I got the third degree from the Deputy Brownell for my one-woman showdown. He backed off when I told him that Bobby, in the interest of maintaining his off -season hunting skills, had confessed to me he’d been responsible for drowning transient Indians from the mission.

Kevin didn’t comment. Or, ask if I’d confronted Bobby about Ben’s murder.

No charges were pressed against me. Or Meredith.

Once the news broke to the general populace of our racially divided city, about the fi nal closure of those unre-solved drowning cases, would Renee Brings Plenty plan a reconciliation march? Probably not.

Th

ere’d be no parade for the remaining members of the Friel family.

367

With time, I hoped to be a distant memory to Meredith. She deserved a normal life as much as Kiyah did.

Jimmer showed up right after the cops left, bulling his way by my side. He promised me a new bow the minute I wanted it. Since he’d spent hours with me choosing that particular model, he alone understood how much I’d loved it. He also understood I’d never use it again. Although his strange proclamation would’ve shocked some, it fl owed over me like warm brandy.

I refused to let Kevin call my father. His brand of comfort I could do without.

After several agonizing hours of observation, the hospital released me into Kevin’s care. He seemed reluctant to let me out of his sight. We’d have to deal with what had happened between us sometime, but not now. At his condo I downed painkillers, following them with a chaser of antibiotics. Th

en, fell into a blessedly dreamless sleep.

Th

e sunlight warming my face sent my pulse skipping with joy. Had the last two weeks been a bad dream and I was waking in a tropical paradise? I stretched and pain reverberated through my body.

“Easy,” Kevin warned. Th

e bed creaked when he

parked himself beside me. His face, severely drawn in fi ne lines with stubble covering his jaw, showed he hadn’t slept a wink. Still, I realized his tentative smile was my own slice of paradise.

“What time is it?”

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“Noon.” Tangles of my hair fell back from my forehead with the gentle stroking of his cool fi ngers. “I think the sheriff will understand if you take the day off .”

Damn. With the way events had blurred together in the past twenty-four hours, he hadn’t heard about my current unemployed status.

“I no longer work for the sheriff .”

I explained Leanne’s restraining order and LaChance’s lawsuit threats.

“So, he suspended me, indefi nitely, without pay. Pissed me off , so I quit.” My fi ngers smoothed over the crisp cotton sheet and I inquired stiffl

y, “Th

at job off er still open?”

Kevin grabbed my hand, placing a kiss on the palm.

“Always.” Th

en, he sighed and stood, giving me a view of his back. “Actually, I’m glad. I wanted to talk to you about something.”

Lilly. He didn’t say her name, but I knew. He’d made a decision. Somehow, the denim comforter ended up clutched tightly in my fi st. “About what?”

He

fi ddled with the plastic stick controlling the blinds.

In one quick movement the blinds closed, blocking fulgent light and plunging us back into near darkness.

“Lilly’s cancer is back,” he said.

Not what I’d expected. “
Back
? When did she have cancer?”

“Five years ago. Way before I ever knew her.”

“I didn’t know.”

369

“No one knows, she doesn’t exactly broadcast it. Anyway, she couldn’t shake her cold and it freaked her out, considering her history. Th

ey ran a bunch of tests.”

“What did they fi nd?”

“Cancer. It’s metastasized. Nothing they can do.”

I rose from the bed like a ninety-year-old invalid and hugged him from behind, every part of my body aching.

“Kevin. I’m so sorry. What can I do?”

“I don’t know. Right now she doesn’t look or act any diff erent, she’s just dying inside. Since there’s no hope of surviving it this go around, she’s decided against treatment.”

His sarcastic chuckle scorched the airless room.

“Much scarier than a commitment, don’t you think?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Th

ey gave her a couple of months, at best. She refuses to spend all of them confi ned to a hospital bed.”

When he paused, I realized that’s why Lilly had disappeared when I was being treated at the hospital. For once I didn’t blame her.

Kevin said, “She wants to travel, do and see everything before she can’t. Spend all the money she’s been saving for a rainy day. She’s asked me to come along.”

“In what capacity?”

“As her companion.”

“Where?”

“Wherever she decides.”

“Make-a-Wish for grownups?” I said lightly.

370

“Something like that.”

“What did you tell her?”

“What do you think I told her?”

I rubbed my chin into his shoulder blade, inhaling the clean scent of him. He leaned back into me and I held on. I should get used to this role reversal; he’d need my strength in the coming months. “When?”

“As soon as I can convince you to come to work for me as my partner.”

I let that sentence hang. “Are you sure you can do this?”

“What? Have you as my partner?”

“No.

Th

is thing with Lilly.”

Th

e shades fl icked open again. “I don’t have any choice.”

He wouldn’t see it as a choice. Kevin always did the right thing, wore the white hat, galloped in at the last second to save the day. He wasn’t the type of man to deny a dying woman her last wish.

But at what cost? He’d never been subjected to the gut-wrenching grief that marred my life. As much as I’d bemoaned that fact, I’d never wished it on him or anyone else. Watching his lover die was the worst sort of initiation into the club. But, he didn’t have to do it. Th is time with

Lilly wouldn’t resemble a free vacation, no matter how neatly she packaged it. Part of me hated she’d even asked this of him.

“You always have a choice,” I said.

He shook his head. “Th

ere’s only one way I wouldn’t go.”

371

My heart thumped. I knew where this was headed. To an area we’d avoided since we’d renewed our friendship three years ago. I wanted to stop right then, but found myself asking, “How?”

“If you asked me not to.”

Feelings neither of us wanted to admit were hidden in his simple set of words. I knew a selfi sh answer on my part would complicate things more than either of us was prepared to acknowledge.

I slowly stepped back away from him. “I wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t

what?”

“Ask you not to go.”

“I know that.” He sighed. “Why do you think I’ve got no choice?”

Th

e silence was suff ocating. I’d never wanted to cry as badly as I did right then. For him. For me. For us. For everything we’d been through in the last few weeks and the denial we’d been playing our entire lives. I sucked it up. Tough girls didn’t cry. I’d survived worse, but it sure didn’t feel like it. I had a choice to make too.

And, I’d always believed choices were what you made of them.

Shelley’s choice years ago ultimately destroyed her.

Father Tim’s guilt over an appalling choice had created a monster in Bobby Adair. David would grieve, but at some point he’d choose to go on. I doubted anything would change Dick’s decision to spend his life on a barstool at 372

Fat Bob’s. Or, cause Charles LaChance to quit off ering his clients outrageous options in the lawsuit lottery.

Poor Samantha Friel had had no choice.

Meredith’s choice was the wisest of all. She’d decided to cut ties, blood and all, and move to Lincoln and start her life over.

Smart

girl.

But then again, so was I.

Nothing about this case had provided me closure.

Even when I wasn’t any closer to fi nding out who’d killed Ben, I knew I’d never stop looking.

Still, I’d changed, Kevin had changed, and that had changed us. For the better? Only time would tell. For now I was able to return the support he’d freely given me.

Th

is was the opportunity to pick a diff erent direction in my life; maybe the right one, for the fi rst time, in a long, long time.

Kevin had made his choice.

I made mine.

He turned. His eyes bespoke a wariness he’d masked from his face.

“So, what do you say?”

“I say, bring it on, baby.” I smiled and stuck out my hand.

“So partner . . . When do I start?”