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She took a moment to glare at him, letting her words sink in. “I know I’ll probably rot in hell. But I don’t care. All I want is to die knowing that I’ve evened the score with the man who destroyed my family. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. Isn’t that what the good book says?”
She opened the Bible in her lap. Her hand snatched up the small but deadly black revolver that was concealed in a hollowed-out space beneath the cover. Her eyes glinted with a fury akin to madness as she pointed the gun at Brock.
Brock froze where he stood. “Johanna, it wasn’t—”
“Don’t talk. Just hear me out.” The gun was unsteady in her hand, but it wouldn’t take much aim to hit a man standing three feet away. “Your killing my daughter was only the beginning. After the grief and shock, my husband had no strength to fight the cancer. And Jeff—Mia’s death wrecked his life. He never forgave himself for letting you drive his car that night. In the end, it killed him, too.
“Jason was a good boy, and I take some blame for what happened. I offered to make him sole heir to my estate if he followed my orders. But if he died, it was because of you—because of what you did.”
Brock measured the distance between them. He could try to take her by surprise, maybe push her chair over. But that would be too risky. She could shoot him in an instant. His best chance lay in talking her down or stalling until the aide came back and called security.
“Before you pull that trigger, you need to know the truth,” he said. “Jeff was the one driving that car. After the wreck, he moved me to the driver’s side and told the police I was at the wheel. Nobody bothered to take fingerprints.”
“I don’t believe that!” Her grip tightened on the pistol. “My son would never do such a despicable thing!”
“You know it’s true. Jeff would never have let me drive his car, even when he was drunk. Chase knew what really happened. He gave me a hundred thousand dollars to take the blame and serve the prison sentence. He did it to spare you. You’d lost your daughter. He knew it would kill you to lose your son, too. He loved you that much. Think about it.”
Her mouth quivered, but Brock went on talking. “I don’t know what made Jeff start drinking and kill himself. It could have been anything—his marriage, his finances, we’ll never know. But it wasn’t me. I was the one who gave him a second chance after the wreck. I took the blame so he could keep his privileged life.
“You wanted justice, Johanna. But every person and animal you paid that monster to harm was innocent, including the woman I love.” Brock held out his hand. “Now give me the gun, and we’ll forget this ever happened.”
“No.” Her eyes had taken on a wild look. “I don’t know if you’re telling the truth, but I’ll give you ten seconds to get out of this room. Any longer, and you’ll be dead on your feet. Now go!”
Brock didn’t argue. Keeping his eyes on her, he backed out of the door. As soon as he was out of her sight, he raced to the reception desk.
“Call security,” he said. “Mrs. Carpenter has a pistol. She was threatening to use it.”
The receptionist laughed. “Oh, we know all about that pistol. Johanna insisted on keeping it because it was her husband’s. But we took all the bullets ages ago. Don’t worry, the gun’s harmless.”
As she spoke the last words, the loud report of a gunshot echoed up the hallway, startling a flock of sparrows from the tree outside the window.
* * *
Before leaving town, Brock paid a visit to the city cemetery. After a brief search, he found what he was looking for—three graves at the foot of an ornate family headstone. The oldest one, on the left, was the only one he cared about.
Kneeling, he placed a long-stemmed pink rose on the grass below the name. “Sleep in peace, Mia,” he whispered, thinking of the pretty, laughing girl who would never know life as a woman.
There were two other graves, with room to spare in the plot. Soon there would be two more. But Brock would not be coming back to see them. Instead he would look ahead to the future—to building a new family with the woman he loved and the other people he had come to care about.
Warm in the late-day sunlight, he walked to the car and started the engine. As he was driving through the cemetery gate, he remembered the key he’d thrust into the ground next to the base of the headstone. It could stay buried, like his past.
He would give Tess a call from the airport to let her know everything was all right. Then he would settle in and wait for the red-eye back to Tucson.
Morning, two days later
Sitting on the edge of her bed, Tess wrapped Mitch’s photograph in the blue silk scarf he’d given her for her eighteenth birthday. After tying the ends securely, she rose, carried it to the cedar hope chest that had been her mother’s, and tucked it beneath layers of fragrant linens. She had loved him dearly and mourned him for ten long years. But she had found someone new to love—someone warm and strong and passionate who thrilled her with his touch. Brock wasn’t perfect, but he had laid his imperfections bare for her in open trust. She knew who and what he was—and she wanted a life with him.
As she left her room and walked along the hallway, it struck her how many things were changing at the Alamo Canyon Ranch. Now that the danger had passed, Lexie and Shane were already organizing their possessions for the move to Brock’s place. Although their absence would be sorely felt here, Tess understood that they needed to do what was best for their family.
But the family would be growing. Val had phoned last night. She and Casey had found their son. They were staying in Bakersfield until legal arrangements could be made for them to bring him home—wherever that home might turn out to be.
As she passed the kitchen, she could hear the sounds of Maria making breakfast and smell the aromas of bacon, coffee, andchu-muth, the buttery, hand-made tortillas favored by her people. The enticing scent followed her outside as she opened the screen door and stepped out into the cool dawn.
Ruben was standing by the paddock fence, watching the bulls. He had come home yesterday, still needing rest but refusing to stay down.
Trailed by the dog, Tess walked across the yard to his side. The worst of his burn scars were still healing. On arriving at his trailer, he had taken off the gauze dressings and let Maria apply herb poultices known to his people since the dawn of time. Tess could see that the natural remedies were already working.
“Shouldn’t you be taking it easy?” she asked him.
