Tag’s mind raced. Was it possible Gerald was up to his neck in this? He hadn’t come back to sweet-talk Lily into taking him back. He’d come back because Mia worked at the Canyon Bar—and she had managed to get the list. Tag cringed. He’d given the thumb drive to Gerald to decode and now it was corrupted.
“Lily mentioned something about Gerald taking a job in California,” Tag said to his father. “This co-op killing group isn’t just in Montana, is it? It’s nationwide?”
“Tag—”
He floored the old pickup as he headed for Lily, praying he wasn’t too late.
* * *
L
ILY
FROZE
AT
the sight of a large dark figure standing in the doorway to the house. Her breath rushed from her as her heart took off on a downhill run.
“Lily, I knew you’d come alone.”
“Gerald?”
He moved then into the dim light so she could see his face. The familiarity of it let her suck in a couple of calming breaths before she asked, “What are you doing here? I thought you flew back to California.”
“I couldn’t leave just yet,” he said. “Are you going to just stand in the garage all day or come inside?”
She bristled at his tone, but quickly quelled her irritation. There was a reason Gerald treated her like a child. Around him she felt like one.
He was still blocking the door as she approached, but he moved aside at the last minute to let her into her own house. She glanced around. Everything looked just as it had yesterday before she’d left to meet him. Yesterday she’d been so sure of herself. So sure she wanted something different.
Someone
more exciting.
“I’m glad you didn’t leave,” she said as she took off her coat.
“Really?” Gerald took the coat and hung it up.
She noticed his was also on the coatrack by the front door—in the same place it had been just two nights before. He’d certainly made himself at home, she thought, noticing that he had a small fire going in her fireplace. She’d picked up the hint of smoke as she’d come in, but hadn’t registered why until this moment.
Lily resisted the part of her that resented Gerald thinking he could just come in and do as he pleased in her house.
“How did you get into the house?” she asked suddenly, and glanced toward the front door, recalling locking it before she left.
“Through the garage. You do realize I am smarter than your garage-door opener, don’t you?”
She studied him, faintly aware that he seemed different. That alone threw her since Gerald had always been so solidly...Gerald.
“I’ve never questioned how smart you are.”
“Really?” he said as he moved around the dining room table, his thick fingers dragging along the smooth edge of the wood.
She saw him slow as he reached her computer and realized that all the paperwork she’d left on the table was gone. She shot a look toward the fire. One of the papers hadn’t completely burned.
Her heart began to pound so hard she thought for sure he would hear it. She glanced toward the computer screen but couldn’t read what was on it.
“I’m surprised that you never asked me why I decided to move to a small private school in California,” Gerald said, drawing her attention back to him.
“I didn’t really get a chance to ask before...” She let the rest of what she would have said yesterday die in her throat. She wasn’t up to a fight with Gerald. His standing her up at the wedding no longer mattered. It seemed a lot more than six months ago.
“Yes, the wedding,” he said, and stopped moving to look at her.
“I don’t want to argue about—”
“I didn’t come here to try to change your mind.”
That surprised her. “Then I guess I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you? I would have thought you of all people would have put it together by now. You were my best student. You disappoint me, Lily.”
She frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The code.”
With a sigh, her body heavy with exhaustion, weary from the events of the past twenty-four hours, she said, “None of that matters. The names were wrong anyway. I almost died for nothing. I almost got Tag—” She stopped herself.
“
Tag.
What kind of name is that anyway? Like Ace? Another name you might call your dog?”
Lily studied Gerald then, feeling the weight of the world settling on her shoulders, and said, “I’m sorry if I hurt you, Gerald. Is that what you need me to say? Is that what you’re doing here? Because I just don’t know what you want from me.”
He took a step toward her. “There was a time you would have known.” He shook his head as he stopped within inches of her and reached out to touch her cheek with his fingers.
She closed her eyes, trying not to think of Tag’s touch, of Tag’s embrace, of Tag.
“But that time has long passed.”
She opened her eyes, hearing the thinly veiled anger in his voice. “That’s why you missed your flight? You just wanted to tell me you don’t love me anymore?” A stab of anger made her heart beat a little faster. “Fine. Give it your best shot. I’ve disappointed you. I’m not good enough for you. Whatever it is, let’s hear it. Then leave.” She had started to step past him when he grabbed her arm.
“You can’t possibly think that I have gone to all this trouble just to have the last word. Don’t you know me any better than that?” he demanded. “Are you so besotted with that cowboy that he’s turned your brain to mush?”
She tried to jerk free of his hold, but he only tightened it. “So this is about jealousy? You didn’t want me but you don’t want anyone else to have me, either?”
“So he has had you.” He swore, something she’d never heard him do before. He’d always said that cursing was a lazy, uneducated waste of the vernacular.
She shot him a withering look.
“Stupid cow,” Gerald snapped. “Didn’t you even question once why your code and mine were so different?”
Lily blinked, thrown off for a moment from the lightning-fast change of topic. “You said mine was off—”
“And you believed me.” He laughed. “I guess I will always be the teacher and you will always be the pupil.”
She stared at him as if seeing a stranger. She had wondered why she’d gotten some of the names right and yet others Gerald had said were wrong. If her original decoding had been accurate, then...
“I just assumed you were right and I was wrong,” she said more to herself than to him. She saw how foolish that had been, not only with the code but also with her entire relationship with this man.
“Come on, my little pupil.
Think.
Don’t you remember me telling you about my younger sister who lives in California?” His fingers clutching her arm tightened painfully.
“You’re hurting me, Gerald.”
“I told you how proud I was of her, that she was even smarter than me,” he said as if he hadn’t heard her or was ignoring her. “Well, guess what? All that money she was making hand over fist? It was one big lie. Embezzlement. She used that magnificent brain of hers to steal, and worse, she got caught!”
“I don’t understand what that—”
“They sent her to prison!
Prison!
They put her with common thieves and killers. My precious baby sister.” His throat worked, his last words coming out in a croak. Tears welled up in his eyes.
Her mind tried to make sense of what he was saying, but she was so emotionally and physically wrung out... She jerked free of his hold and took a step back, banging into the edge of the kitchen counter.
Looming over her, he glared at her as if she were the one who’d sent his sister to prison. “Do you know anything about prison, Lily? No, of course you wouldn’t know what a woman like my sister has to do to survive there.”
Lily felt a chill run the length of her spine. The murder list. Her mind leapt from that thought to the most obvious one. “You didn’t come here after six months to try to get me back.”
Gerald gave a laugh, but it came out sounding like a sob.
“Finally.”
He met her gaze, his challenging. “I did what I had to do to keep my sister safe. Just as I am going to do what I have to now.”
Lily gripped the kitchen counter behind her. She was so exhausted she was having trouble understanding what he was talking about. “Gerald, it doesn’t matter anymore. They say the thumb drive was corrupted—”
“I destroyed the information on the thumb drive when your boyfriend let me use it to decode the names,” he said with his usual arrogance. “The information is worthless. I also destroyed the paper copies you left at the motel. The one you left was worthless. The original is gone.”
Her gaze went to her computer and he laughed.
“While I was waiting for you, I put a virus in your computer that by now has destroyed everything—including the hard drive. I figured you might have used your brother’s computer at some point, so when I used it to give your boyfriend the names, I also made sure a virus will destroy all his data.”
He was enjoying showing how superior he was to her and the rest of the world. She’d seen that trait in him but never quite like this. What scared her was the feeling that he’d come here to do more than gloat.
A bubble of fear rose in her throat until she thought she would choke on it. “So you took care of everything.”
“Not quite,” he said as he closed the narrow space between them. “There is only one more copy I need to destroy.” He tapped her temple. “I used to be so jealous of the way you could remember the most random things. You could remember entire lists of numbers and letters.” He smiled and nodded. “You do remember the original thumb drive lists, don’t you? I knew it. You’ve never been able to hide anything from me.”
Chapter Seventeen
Tag left the truck at the bottom of the last hill and ran the rest of the way up the road to Lily’s house. He’d brought one of the guns from his father’s hidden stash, but he was praying he wasn’t going to have to use it.
Maybe Gerald really had gotten on the flight to California. Maybe the fact that he had a sister in prison had nothing to do with anything that had been going on.
Tag knew he was clutching at straws. There were two many coincidences. Gerald was up to his eyeballs in this. Worse, Tag had handed over the thumb drive to him. He’d trusted Gerald because he’d been so desperate to find Lily and get her out of this mess. He’d only gotten her in deeper.
Unfortunately there would be no way to prove Gerald had corrupted the thumb drive. Even the fact that he’d given the feds the wrong names could be swept under the rug as a simple mistake.
So why would Gerald do anything stupid right now when he could walk away free?
Because Lily still had a copy of the information on her computer, Tag thought with a sinking heart.
As he neared the house, he prayed he would find Lily alone, Gerald long gone.
But when he climbed up onto the deck and moved to the front window, he saw Lily and Gerald in the kitchen. He didn’t need to hear what they were saying to each other. He could tell by their body language and their expressions that they were arguing.
His stomach roiled at the sight. Lily was backed up against the kitchen counter. Gerald was looming over her.
Tag tried the door, not surprised to find it locked. He was afraid to knock. He needed the element of surprise, and even with it he feared what would happen next.
He picked up a large flowerpot from the deck and, stepping back, hurled it through the window. Glass rained down in a shower onto the deck as the huge window shattered.
Pulling his gun, Tag quickly jumped through the opening into Lily’s living room.
Gerald had turned in surprise at the sound of the breaking glass. His eyes widened at the gun in Tag’s hands.
“Get away from him!” Tag yelled as he strode toward them, the gun aimed at Gerald’s chest.
Lily seemed nailed to the floor. Her eyes widened in alarm, her mouth opened as if to scream, but nothing came out.
In that instant, Gerald took advantage of her inability to move and grabbed her, locking his arm around her throat as he backed the two of them against the kitchen counter.
“That’s far enough,” Gerald said as Tag advanced. “Come any closer and I’ll break her neck.”
Tag stopped at the edge of the dining room. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lily’s laptop still open on the table, but the papers she’d been doing her decoding on were gone and there was the faint smell of smoke from the fireplace in the room.
“Drop your gun. Slowly,” Gerald ordered.
Tag could see the painful hold Gerald had on Lily and knew he couldn’t get a shot off without risking her life. Gerald was using her like a shield. Tag slowly lowered his gun, but didn’t drop it.
“What’s going on, Gerald?” he asked as he carefully bent down and placed his weapon on the floor, never taking his eyes off Lily’s.
“Now kick the gun over here.”
Tag did as he was told. The gun skittered across the floor. Gerald slowly reached down, dragging Lily with him, and picked up the gun with his free hand, never releasing his hold on her.
“You really should have gone back to Texas and left Lily alone.”
* * *
L
ILY
HAD
FELT
too tired to fight Gerald earlier. Now things had changed. She found a reserved strength she hadn’t known she possessed. Gerald had the gun pointed at Tag. For the second time in two days, she was faced with a life-or-death situation after more than thirty-two years of an ordered, overly structured life. The only time she’d felt she wasn’t in control was when she came up here to the Canyon to work for her brother.
Until this.
“Let him go,” Lily said hoarsely from the choke hold on her throat. “This is between you and me.”
Gerald’s laugh held no humor. “That might have been the case yesterday when I pleaded with you to come back to me. Maybe we could have worked something out then....”
“You sold out your own fiancée,” Tag said as he took a step toward the dining room, forcing Gerald to turn a little in order to keep her in front of him.
“Ex-fiancée,” Gerald snapped, and motioned the gun at him. “Didn’t she mention that to you? I’m surprised. I thought the two of you...”
“That’s what I planned to tell you,” Lily said. She shifted so she was closer to the kitchen counter. Her hand snaked behind her as she sought out the drawer where she’d dropped the gun earlier. “I was hoping it wasn’t too late for us, Gerald. I wanted the life you offered where I knew who I was.” There was a ring of truth to her words since that was exactly what she’d been thinking on her way home.
Tag’s gaze widened a little, his expression saddening.
“It’s not too late, Gerald,” she continued as she eased the drawer open. “As you said, there’s no proof you’ve done anything wrong. You’ve destroyed everything, all that you need to worry about anyway. If you kill this man, then that all changes.”
She eased the drawer open, feeling Gerald loosen the hold on her a little. Her fingers curled around the handle of the gun.
“You had second thoughts?” Gerald said quietly next to her ear.
She nodded. His hold loosened even a little more. She could breathe, and for a moment that was all she did. Then she slowly lifted out the gun, holding it at her side out of his range of sight. “I was going to come back to you.”
As if he felt the truth in her words, his surprise moved through his body. He seemed to slump against her.
“I don’t understand,” he whispered.
Tag was looking at her as if he didn’t understand, either.
“I wanted safe,” she said.
“Safe?” Gerald repeated, and let out a hoarse laugh, the irony not lost on him.
Tag’s gaze went to her side. He gave a small shake of his head at the sight of the gun clutched in her hand.
“Nothing has changed,” Gerald said, his tone almost pleading. “We can get past this. Our lives can be exactly like we planned. Even better after this.”
Lily had to bite her tongue. Did he really think they could pick up where they’d left off? All forgiven and forgotten?
He was crazier than she’d thought.
In the distance, she heard sirens and realized how badly this could go if she didn’t move quickly. “Tag, you should go,” she said.
Gerald shook his head and tightened his hold on her. “Lily. We can’t let him just walk away. Not now.”
“We have to, Gerald. It’s the only way.”
But even as she said it, she felt Gerald tense the arm holding the gun. He leveled it at Tag’s heart. “I’m sorry, Lily, but I think it’s too late for us.”
* * *
T
AG
KNEW
WHEN
he came through the door that Gerald was dangerous. The man had come too far and knew there was no turning back. Gerald Humphrey had crossed a line that a man like him couldn’t come back from.
For just an instant, Tag felt sorry for him. He could understand wanting to protect someone you loved.
He looked down the barrel of the gun Gerald had pointed at him, saw the man steady it and knew all the talking was done.
At the same time, Tag saw Lily make the decision. “No!” he yelled as he dived to the side. The first gunshot was followed only an instant later by a second.
The scream that filled the air made the hair rise on the back of his neck. He hit the floor and rolled, coming up to find Gerald Humphrey on the floor holding the thigh of his right leg and writhing in pain.
Lily stood over him, the gun still in her hand, her face as white as the snow outside. Gerald had gotten off one shot before dropping his weapon and grabbing his wounded leg.
Tag quickly stepped to him to kick his gun away before reaching to take the pistol from Lily. She had a death grip on the gun. He eased it from her fingers.
She gave him a barely perceptible nod.
He smiled as he cupped a hand behind her neck and drew her to him, wrapping her in his arms. She hugged him tightly as he breathed the words into the soft, sweet scent of her hair. “You saved my life.”
On the floor, Gerald began to curse. “Are the two of you just going to let me lie here and bleed to death? Call a doctor!”
In the distance, Tag could hear the sirens. He pulled out his cell phone, hit 911 and asked for an ambulance as flashing lights flickered across the fallen snow outside the window. Tag watched his father and Deputy Marshal Jake Thorton come racing up to the house, weapons drawn, and pulled Lily closer.