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He saw it as clear as if he’d been in Leann’s apartment that night. Friends, like sisters, she’d said. Leann going from man to man, searching for something elusive while she made promises she never meant to keep. “You tried to stop her from making a mistake.”
Abigail made a swipe at her tears. She looked so young, so heartbroken. The woman she’d loved like a sister had been about to abandon her, probably not for the first time. “I couldn’t let her leave with that man. She knew it was a mistake, but he’d promised her a new life far away.”
Stuart suspected she was right, given that Leann’s alleged suicide note had made it sound as if she was questioning what she was about to do. That was why it had been ruled a suicide. Had she left the note because she knew Abigail was coming to Powder Crossing? Had she thought she and Rory would be gone before her needy, clingy friend arrived?
Abigail’s voice dropped to almost a whisper. “She was changing her mind about leaving, but then...”
“Rory showed up,” he guessed.
Her face went blank, her eyes unfocused as if lost in the past. “I told him to leave but he wouldn’t. He was going to make her go with him, saying that he was protecting her from me.” She looked over at him, frowning as if confused by that.
“What happened then?” he asked, but suspected he already knew.
Her gaze, steady, tear-free, met his. “Leann walked him out to his truck. When he climbed behind the wheel, I killed him to save her. But then she said you would come after us. You were obsessed with her. That you would find out what I’d done. That she could never be free because you were smart and would figure it out. And you would lock me up.”
That was why Abigail had searched the file and his house. She thought he was coming after her.
Her voice broke as she said, “She said that we were never getting that little house. We couldn’t be sisters anymore.” Tears welled in her eyes. “We couldn’t even be friends because of what I’d done. But I did it to save her. We could have run away like she was planning to do with Rory, but she said no. She was going to call you.You. I couldn’t let her do that.”
“Abigail,” he said, his heart hurting for this misguided, trusting woman who’d been through too much disappointment. “You made it look like she’d committed suicide. It worked. It was over. I wouldn’t have come after you.”
Tears cascaded down her cheeks even as she smiled. “I know. You really thought she’d killed herself.” Her voice dropped to a scary, paper-thin level. “But then you found his truck.” She wiped at her cheek and reached into the side pocket of the door again, only this time, she didn’t come out with a tissue.
The blade of the knife caught the dull light before the storm. Before he could react, she struck out with it and suddenly she was screaming at the top of her lungs, her eyes wide. He got his arm up, saw the blood before he felt the pain as the blade sliced his arm open.
“Stop!” he yelled, the word lost in her screams as she slashed at him again and again in the close confines of the car, driving the blade into him as he tried to grab her wrist. But she was too quick, too abnormally strong, in her frenzy. He tried to fight her off as he fumbled for his weapon.
The sound of the gunshot seemed to surprise them both.
She swung the knife in an arc, but slower, less in control. He was able to grab her wrist with his free hand and wrenched the knife from her bloody fingers. He realized he was holding his gun in his other hand. He had no memory of pulling it from his holster, let alone firing it.
She stared at him with unseeing eyes for a moment before she slumped over onto the steering wheel. He jumped as the horn began to sound and quickly pulled her away from it. She collapsed back into the seat. Like everything around them, she was covered with splattered blood, now not all his. As he stared at her, still in shock, her blood stopped leaking out of the hole in her chest and she fell to the side, her cheek against the driver’s side window.
Stuart felt in shock, almost unaware of how badly he was injured. He still had his gun in his hand, the knife in the other. He dropped both to the floor, fumbled to open his door, his hand slick with blood, and stepped out.
The sky had darkened over the bare limbs of the cottonwoods. He could feel the cold as the snowstorm blew out of the mountains, the temperature dropping. He reached for his phone with fingers still dripping with blood. He was shaking so hard he could barely make the call. As he did, he stumbled off the roadbed, dropping down into the snowy barrow pit and into the trees. The ground was soft from layers of dried leaves and piles of snow that had blown in against the large trunks, too deep to have melted even during this warm spell.
What had he done? “You reap what you sow,” he heard his grandmother say in his ear as he fell face-first into the decaying leaves and dirty snow.
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHARLOTTERODEHERhorse into the meadow. It had been unusually warm lately but there was still snow banked against the north side of the trees and the creek. Elaine was already there, standing next to the creek where water burbled under a thick layer of ice. The smell of snow was in the air and Charlotte could feel the temperate dropping. A snowstorm was blowing in.
She crossed the creek and dismounted, walking over to join her friend, who appeared lost in thought. Charlotte still marveled that she and Elaine were friends at all. Elaine was a fixture at the McKenna Ranch and had been for years. She’d become good friends with Holden’s first wife, Margaret “Margie” Smith—just as Charlotte had been at one time. Then Margie had married Holden, crushing Charlotte’s dreams.
It had been Margie’s idea for Elaine to reach out to her, to broker peace between the families. Even when Margie was dying of cancer, she’d kept trying to get Charlotte to forgive Holden through Elaine.
Elaine would ride over, and they would meet secretly. At first, Charlotte had wanted nothing to do with either Elaine or Margie. Yet, she’d agreed to the meetings after a while. For Charlotte, it had been a tenuous connection to the man she’d loved, one she’d guiltily indulged in.
Over the years, she and Elaine had become good friends, cloak-and-dagger friends. It was her only way to know what was going on over at the McKenna Ranch. It was also Elaine’s way of still trying all these years later to get her to forgive Holden and bringing peace between the families.
“I’m sorry about the Turner place,” Elaine said, knowing how much her friend had needed that ranch. Charlotte nodded. “At least this way, the ranch will stay as it is. How is CJ?”
She shook her head. “I’m worried about him.”
“Of course you are. He’s not any better?”
“No. You know about Tilly and Cooper?” Of course Elaine did. She would have known even before Charlotte herself.
