Snowfall on Haven Point (28 page)

That sharp ache seemed to have lodged permanently in his chest at the heartbreaking impossibility of the situation. He wanted Andie in his life and he wanted Will and Chloe as well, while she wanted a different man than he could ever be.

The doorbell rang suddenly. His pulse jumped, but he knew instantly it couldn't be Andie. For one thing, she had a key and wouldn't need to ring the doorbell. For another, Sadie—normally so sweet and easygoing—snarled and hurried to the front door, where she waited, hackles raised, for Marshall to make his way down the narrow hallway on his crutches.

When he opened the door, Marshall stared. “Jackie! What are you doing here? What's wrong?”

It didn't take a crack detective to recognize someone who had reached a precipice and stumbled over the edge. She wasn't wearing a coat, despite the weather, just a shirt with the buttons not quite matched up. Her hair was wild, tangled, in a crooked ponytail that looked as if it hadn't been combed in at least two or three days and the circles he had noted a week earlier under her eyes looked several shades darker.

“Come in. What's wrong?” he asked again.

Instead of answering, she let out a low, keening sort of moan. “I can't fix it. I can't. I tried and I can't.”

“Fix what?”

In answer, she burst into tears—noisy, ugly sobs that made Sadie whine and duck into Andie's bedroom.

Marshall stood in the entry on his crutches, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do. He could handle hostage situations, vehicle chases, bank robberies.

So why did a woman's tears send him straight into panic mode?

This was the second time that day he had faced them and he wasn't any better prepared now than he had been with Louise Jacobs.

“Come in, out of the cold,” he ordered her again. “Don't cry. Whatever is wrong, we'll figure out how to make it right.”

“I can't. I thought I could, but I can't,” she cried.

She was heading for full-on hysteria in a minute. If that happened, he wouldn't be able to get anything out of her.

“Let's get you a glass of water, and then you can tell me what has you so upset.”

“Don't be nice to me. I don't deserve it.”

“Sure you do.”

He didn't give her a chance to refuse; he simply swung around and made his way back down the hall, sensing maybe she needed someone to take the lead.

As he had hoped, she followed him after a beat.

“Sit down. I'll get you something to drink.” He had been on plenty of calls involving someone in the midst of a mental health crisis. This was no different, except it was someone he knew.

“Is there somebody I can call? Your sister or a doctor or that counselor who helped you after your divorce?” he prompted.

“No. They can't help me. Nobody can help me.”

Her emotional state bordered on despair, which worried him. He reached in his pocket for his cell phone, wondering how she might react if he called paramedics. Better to keep her talking for a moment to assess the situation, he decided.

“That's not true,” he said gently. “I'm trying to help, but I can't unless you tell me what's going on. Why are you so upset? Did somebody hurt you?”

“No. It's me.”

He frowned. “You hurt yourself?”

“I made terrible mistakes. So many terrible mistakes.” Jackie buried her head in her hands. “I was trying to do the right thing—to help my boy. That's all I wanted. But I messed everything up and you got hurt and I'm sick about it now. I can't fix it and I'm so sorry.”

She lifted her wild-eyed gaze to his, and for the first time, in the better light of the kitchen, he realized her pupils didn't look normal. She was obviously on some kind of narcotic. What the hell? Jackie wasn't a user, at least as far as he'd ever witnessed—though he'd never seen any sign of acute mental illness, either, other than a few bouts of depression as her divorce worked its way through the courts and her son struggled with substance abuse.

He had worked beside Jackie for years when he had been a deputy and she worked for his predecessor, and then very closely for the last year as the sheriff, but this frantic, distressed woman seemed like someone he didn't even recognize.

“I'm sorry,” she said again. “I had to tell you I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

“Okay. Sorry for what? Let's start there?”

She burst into more noisy tears and buried her head in her hands. For a long moment, she didn't seem capable of answering him. This was above his pay grade. She was either high on something or having a mental breakdown. Either way, she needed medical help.

He pulled his phone out, but before he could dial 911, she lifted her head again.

“That,” she said, pointing at him. “I did that.”

He was completely baffled, until he realized she wasn't pointing at
him
, she was pointing at the crutches holding him up.

He felt cold and hot at the same time. “What are you talking about?”

“I didn't want to hurt you. I just needed you to stay away from work for a few weeks so I could make things right. I only wanted to make things right again, Marshall, I swear. I was going to fix everything. I just needed more time.”

He knew. Suddenly he knew.

He dredged up his memories of that secretive phone call from the confidential informant; the vehicle racing toward him through the snow; the dark shape in a ski mask, escaping between tents at the Lights on the Lake festival, right after he had seen Jackie there. It was a struggle to reconcile those bits of evidence, given this jarring paradigm shift, but yeah. Any of those suspects could have been a woman.

“You were driving the car. You tried to kill me.”

Eyes haunted, she swiped at her nose with the back of her hand. “Not kill you,” she sniffled. “You were always so nice to me. I didn't want to even
hurt
you, but I didn't know what else to do. I just needed you to stay home so I could make things right.”

“You took the money from evidence, didn't you? This was all about trying to hide what you did.”

She closed her eyes at the accusation and he knew his guess had found its target.

“I knew you suspected me. I knew it, especially when you came into the office last week, even though the doctors told you not to.”

“Why? How did you think you'd get away with it? You know the procedures as well as anybody. You knew we would eventually find it missing.”

She rose and began to pace around the kitchen in a haphazard way. “It was supposed to be only for a few weeks. That's all. I just needed cash until the divorce settlement came through, so I...borrowed it. I thought I could pay it back. I was supposed to get a check this week, and then I could make everything right.”

“Why? If you needed a loan, I could have helped you.”

“They didn't give me a choice,” she sobbed again, and his mind raced, trying to figure out who
they
were. Was somebody blackmailing her? Was she hiding gambling debts?

Suddenly he knew the answer before her next words even confirmed it.

“The rehab center wouldn't take Jeremy unless I paid up front and he needed help,” she said. “My boy needed help and I didn't have the money and I couldn't wait for the attorneys to hash out the divorce settlement, so I...borrowed it from evidence.”

“Oh, Jackie.”

“I only took the cash retrieved from that meth bust over the summer. It was only right, wasn't it? They stole my sweet boy from me, so I stole some of their dirty money to help him get clean again. Don't you think that was only fair?”

Her voice had lost some of the hysteria. Now it sounded tired.

“How much have you had to drink today, Jackie?”

She rubbed at her eyes. “Nothing. Not to drink. Pills.”

Damn it. He should have called 911 the moment she'd shown up on the doorstep, when he saw she was acting irrational and out of control.

He dialed the number now, hoping to hell he wasn't too late.

“This is Sheriff Bailey. I have an urgent medical emergency at my house on Riverbend Road. I need an ambulance. Possible overdose.” He turned to her. “How many and what kind of medication? We need to get you to the hospital.”

“It's too late,” she whispered. “Put your phone down, Sheriff. Tell them not to come. It's too late.”

She gave a tired-looking smile that chilled him to the bone. “I didn't take that many, anyway. Not enough to do anything. Just enough so maybe it won't hurt as much.”

His insides clenched as a dark suspicion bloomed. “So what won't hurt as much?”

In answer, she reached into her purse, pulled out a small black .38 Special and held it to her temple. Though her hands trembled, she still managed to work the safety.

“Women don't kill themselves with guns nearly as often as men. Did you know that?”

Yeah. He knew. The ratio was about two men to one woman—but in this case, once was more than enough, especially when that particular one was someone he knew, standing in his kitchen.

This was surreal, that she could cite statistics to him while holding a loaded handgun to her own head.

“There are a lot of reasons,” she said, her voice dreamy now. “Some say it's because women don't like guns and don't have access to them as often. Or maybe it's because women don't want to leave a big mess behind. Men don't care about the messes they leave behind. Just ask my son of a bitch ex-husband. They say women don't use guns as often because it's final. Sometimes they just want the drama. They don't really want to go, right? You can have your stomach pumped after taking pills, but you can't rewind once you've blown the top of your head off.”

Now she held the gun under her chin, where they both knew it could do maximum damage. “I don't want to rewind,” she said, the words full of a desolate pain. “I can't go to jail. I can't.”

“We can work this out, Jackie. You don't have to go to jail. Come on. Give me the gun.” He said the word clearly and firmly, hoping the dispatcher could hear it over the line and relay that to the responding officers.

She shook her head. “I stole evidence in a drug case and I can't pay it back. My divorce attorney called this morning and said the money's gone. My settlement. That rat bastard hid it somewhere and we can't find it. He won't pay for our son to go to rehab, but he can take his whore to the Caymans so he can hide everything we built together for twenty years.”

“We'll get you a better attorney, then.” He tried to keep her talking while he edged ever closer. It was hard to do it by stealth when he was on crutches, but he did his best. “We'll arrest your ex on tax evasion. We'll figure it out. Put down the gun.”

“It will be too late. I'll go to jail. I don't want to go to jail.” Her hand shook a little more. “I hate the jail. It stinks in there and the ladies are mean.”

“Look, you need to give me the gun now. You don't want this, Jackie, I promise. Jeremy will get out of rehab soon and you need to be here for him.”

She shook her head. Were her movements slowing down? Could he risk lunging at her? With her finger wedged on the trigger, he wasn't sure.

“He's so mad at me,” she said, her words slurred and sorrowful. “So mad. He won't even talk to me, because I made him go to rehab. I made him. If he didn't, I told him I would have you put him in jail.”

Where was Cade? Marshall judged approximately two minutes had passed since he called 911 and they should be screaming up within five or six, as long as the dispatcher overheard the call he'd left connected.

“I'm not mad at you. Does that make you feel better? I understand why you ran me down. You were only trying to help your son. Maybe I would have done the same thing.”

“You wouldn't. You're so nice. The nicest boss I ever had. I hurt you and I feel
so bad
.”

Tears gushed out and she reached to wipe her nose again with the hand holding the weapon before placing it back under her chin.

He could hear noise on the front step and had to hope it was backup. On the other hand, there was always the chance that in her befuddled state, she might instinctively fire at anybody who walked through the door.

“Jackie,” he said, his voice stern and loud. “I need you to give me your weapon. Do you hear me? That's an order.”

He hoped his firmness would break through the fog of substances clouding her judgment—and would also convey again to dispatch that a weapon was involved.

He thought he had won when she hesitated, but she finally only shook her head. “I can't. I'm sorry I bothered you. I shouldn't have come here. I just wanted you to know I never wanted to hurt you and I'm sorry.”

He watched the doorway out of the edge of his vision, trying to avoid looking directly so Jackie didn't notice. When Cade and his guys came in, Marshall hoped they provided enough of a distraction for him to sweep in and disarm her.

And then he spotted someone with her back against the wall, peering into the room.

Andie.

Everything inside him turned to ice. Not Andie. No.
Go
, he wanted to yell at her.
Get the hell out of here.
But he was afraid if he said anything, Jackie might lose her tenuous hold on reality.

“Who's that? Is someone here?” She waved the gun in the direction of the hallway.

Andie.

“I don't think so,” he said. Panic lodged, cold and hard, in his chest and he knew he had to draw her attention back to him and do everything he could to disarm her. “Come on, Jackie. Give me the gun. You don't want to die, right?”

She frowned at him. “Yes. Yes, I do. It's better than jail.”

* * *

S
OMETHING
WAS
WRONG
.

She couldn't have said exactly how she knew, but the moment she walked into the house, Andie sensed it. Most likely it was a combination of things—the strange car parked at an odd angle in the driveway or the way Sadie whined from the doorway of the guest bedroom or the tense, hard voices she heard coming from the kitchen.