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“Reed. Detective Reed. He was coming. Right there!” She flailed wildly with her pistol, gesturing toward the parking area, to her Bentley. “He was out there. And I killed him.”
“Just go inside.” Tyson needed to think. Things were falling apart. Nikki Gillette had been here and she’d taken off, getting away after nearly neutering him, and then there was the cop in the woods. He’d recognized her. Delacroix, Reed’s partner, and now the lead detective himself was here? Ashley was right. They needed to leave.
And go where?
“Tyson Beaumont. Ashley Jefferson. Drop your weapons. Put your hands over your head and—”
Tyson caught a glimpse of her and fired, then dropped to the floorboards. “Get inside,” he yelled at Ashley. “Get the hell inside.”
“Oh, God . . .” Ashley screamed.
From the corner of his eye he saw a flash of movement. And Nikki Gillette was there, swinging something over her head.
He turned just in time to see the gaffing hook, sharp and deadly, before it slammed into his face, crunching bone, cutting flesh, causing blood to spurt.
He tried to shoot.
Bam!
The blast was deafening and he reeled, feeling his face rip apart, the hook pulling out his cheek with pieces of jaw. Blood filled his eye socket as he stared up and saw Ashley standing over him.
“No more,” she said as Nikki Gillette stumbled backward, and he caught a glimpse of Pierce Reed, his weapon leveled at Ashley as he shielded his wife with his bloodied body.
Tyson felt the blood oozing out of him as he lay on the porch, staring up at the rafters, the world growing dark. There was movement, and voices, and a siren so loud it pierced his brain.
His last image was of that younger detective, the one who had been skulking in the woods. “Go to hell, brother,” she said to him, and kicked his gun off the porch, into the weeds. “Go straight to hell.”
EPILOGUE
October, two months later
With Mikado curled at her feet and Jennings staring out the window to the bare branches of the tree outside, Nikki ignored her cooling coffee and stared at her computer screen. Her attic loft was cozy, a throw covering her legs, the chill of autumn held at bay as she worked on her next book. She’d already written a series of articles on the Beaumont estate, as she’d planned for the Sentinel, but the series had been expanded to include the Duval sisters’ disappearance and homicides. As Reed had promised, Nikki had been given exclusive interviews and she felt she’d nailed them, enough so that Norm Metzger was talking of leaving Savannah for a sports job in some town south of Tampa, where he could fish and check out spring training.
“Go for it,” she said as if Metzger could hear her. Jennings hopped onto her lap and she set her laptop aside to stroke the cat’s head.
Some things had turned out surprising. She’d put together that Tyson Beaumont had followed her in his gray truck. He’d been worried that she’d been getting too close. The same had been true with Jade Delacroix, who had placed a GPS monitor on her car as Jade figured Nikki was onto more than she was letting the police department know, which was true enough, and because as irritated as Jade was that Nikki might mess up her own investigation and tracking down of her sisters’ abductor, she’d used Nikki to help her uncover the truth.
Reed was still pissed about that.
At the newspaper, Fink was dangling the carrot of her taking over the crime writer’s job at the paper, but she wasn’t certain she still wanted it. She found working on the true-crime book less stressful and she had more time to delve deep into a story.
She was currently waiting for a call from the Houston Police as Greta and Herman Kemp had been picked up for another scam after their attempt to pass Greta off as Rose Duval had failed. What had they been thinking? Didn’t they know about DNA?
On a sadder note, the body of the boy found by Frank Mentos at Black Bear Lake had been ID’d as Billy Nichols, a runaway with a history of drug abuse. Toxicology reports had suggested that he’d overdosed, and though his death may well have been acccidental, and he hadn’t been the victim of foul play, it was a sad commentary and happened far too often.
As Nikki was trying to piece together a longer, detailed story of the Duval girls and what had really happened, for the book, she’d received some of her information from Ashley Jefferson before her attorney had insisted Ashley speak to no one, including Nikki. Ashley, who was currently out on bail, awaiting murder charges for the death of Tyson Beaumont, the man she loved and hated, while her husband, Ryan, was going through the motions of divorcing his wife and demanding sole custody of their children.
“So much for the mommy blog,” Nikki said aloud, and Mikado swept the floor with his tail. Ashley was facing other charges as well, all stemming from aiding and abetting Tyson in his abduction and killing of the Duval sisters twenty years ago. And though how Ashley had pieced together that Tyson had killed Bronco Cravens and Owen Duval was still unclear, Nikki’s recording of Tyson and Ashley’s last conversation was part of the evidence against her. Along with Nikki’s testimony.
Tyson’s need to be Baxter’s only heir had, ultimately, gotten him killed.
And then there was Rose Duval/Jade Delacroix, who, as it turned out, was now the single living progeny of Baxter Beaumont.
Fitting.
Though Jade, on leave from the department pending an investigation into her actions, seemed disinterested in the Beaumont fortune. And there was Connie-Sue, Baxter’s wife, who had lost her only son and was dealing with a mental breakdown. She probably wouldn’t be welcoming Rose into th
e family with open arms. But there were ways to cut an unhappy wife out of the lion’s share of an estate. If that was Baxter’s intent. He, too, had lost his son.
