Cowboy with a Cause (17 page)

With the call made, he stood at the mouth of the alley, fear nearly casting him to his knees. Where could she be? Who had taken her? And most importantly of all, were they already too late to save her?

* * *

Melanie came to with the smell of pasture under her nose and a pounding in her head that made her nauseous. For several long minutes she remained unmoving, waiting for the headache to abate, for the fogginess in her brain to dissipate enough so that she could think.

What was happening? Where was she and how had she gotten here? She fought to work through the cotton that felt wrapped around her brain, cutting her off from reality.

She opened one eye in a narrow slit, unsurprised to find earth beneath her. She sensed somebody nearby but was afraid to turn over on her back, afraid to see who was with her before she figured out what had happened.

Closing her eye again, she tried to think.

Halloween. She’d been on her way to the store to pick up candy. Adam had told her he loved her. Her thoughts froze on that single thought. Adam had told her he loved her and she’d rejected him and now she was on the ground someplace and didn’t know how she got here or what was happening to her.

She’d been on her way to the store. She had sensed somebody walking behind her and had moved over to allow them to pass. A sting in the neck and then nothing.

She fought against a deep sob that threatened to burst forth from her. Obviously she’d been drugged by that little bee sting in the neck. How long had she been unconscious?

Cold. She was so cold. She no longer wore the coat she’d had on when she left the house. An uncontrollable shudder propelled through her as she recognized she was in trouble. She thought she might be in big trouble.

“I know you’re conscious,” a deep voice said from nearby.

It was a familiar voice, and with a sharp intake of breath she opened her eyes and rolled over on her back. She sat up and looked at the man who had orchestrated this new terror.

Deputy Jim Collins looked neat and professional in his khaki uniform. The midday sun glinted off his deputy badge. She shot a glance around, still trying to absorb everything.

She was in the center of a vast overgrown pasture. There were no outbuildings in sight. In the far distance she saw an old tractor that looked as if it hadn’t been ridden in years, his patrol car and the decaying carcass of a dead cow. She looked back at him in horror.

“That’s old Nelly,” he said as he pointed to the dead cow. “She had a bad limp in her left front leg, couldn’t walk very well, and so I brought her here and shot her.”

The reference to a bad leg certainly wasn’t lost on her and a new terror threatened to take hold of her. Did he intend to shoot her like he had his cow and leave her body out here to decompose?

“Jim, what’s going on? Why am I here?” And where was here? she wondered as she stared at Jim.

His brown eyes seemed to darken to black coals. “You’re here because this is where you belong.” He shoved his hands in his pants pockets, a tension seeming to swell his body beneath the official jacket that he wore. “My parents gave me this land when I was sixteen. It was for me to build my dream family home.”

She frowned, trying to focus on his words and not on the panic that made it hard for her to breathe, the panic that made it impossible not to focus on how rough the dirt was beneath her palms as she braced herself up. “I don’t understand. What does this have to do with me?”

“Everything!” The word exploded from him as if it was a bullet shot from a gun. “I was going to build my dream house here and you were supposed to be here with me. We were going to get married and have children and be a happy family together.”

“What are you talking about?” Melanie felt as if the world had suddenly become an alien place, that he was part of the landscape, a dangerous subspecies of human spouting a language she didn’t understand.

“We dated. We were in love and we were going have a perfect life together.” He jerked his hands from his pockets and took a step closer to her, his eyes blazing with anger, with a bitter betrayal.

She stared up at him in astonishment. What on earth was he talking about? “Jim, we went out a couple of times, but it was nothing more than a few casual dates. I never told you I loved you, that I wanted to marry you.”

“Yes, you did! You did tell me that you loved me.” Spittle flew from his mouth as he screamed the words.

“When? When did I tell you that?” she cried, her heart beating so fast, it felt as if it might pop right out of her chest.

“On graduation day. I hugged you and told you I loved you, and you told me you loved me, too. You loved me and then you left. You didn’t just leave me, but you left the whole town for some stupid dream that you thought was so much more important than me and our love.”

Speechless, she stared at him as her mind went back in time to the day of graduation. After the final cap toss in the air, bedlam had reigned and all the students had been hugging family members and fellow students. There had been plenty of “I love yous” thrown around, along with promises to be best friends, lovers and/or partners forever.

Had she told Jim “I love you, too”? Possibly. She’d probably also said those very same words to dozens of girls and boys that day. She’d been euphoric on graduation day, aware that it was finally her time to pursue the dream of dancing she’d held close to her heart since she was a child.

Before she could say anything, he continued, pacing about ten feet from where she was propped up on the hard earth. “All through our junior and senior year I worked to draw up the plans for our house. I fantasized about our wedding day. Whenever we were together, I saw the way you looked at me and I knew that all my dreams would come true.”

He was screaming now, his pleasant features twisted into a Halloween mask of monster rage. “And then you just left. Without a word, without any regard for me and my plans. You just left, like the selfish bitch you are.”

She was stunned by the vitriol that poured from him. Sick. He was sick in the head, she realized, and as she smelled the scent of death that came from the cow, she feared Jim’s next move.

“Jim, I’m sorry if I hurt you. That was never my intention.” Her voice trembled uncontrollably. “Was it you who broke into my bedroom?”

For a moment his rage faded and a small smile played on his lips. “Scared you, didn’t I? I got a big hoot out of coming in and out of your bedroom window a couple of times. I moved your teakettle, just to mess with your mind.” His eyes became hard, flat pebbles once again. “And I smashed those pictures of you on the wall.”

Another smile played on his lips. “But I particularly enjoyed breaking in and moving your wheelchair, trying to get you out of that closet and then being called to investigate the crime.”

The smile vanished and once again his eyes grew dark and cold. “I would have eventually got to you that night if Adam hadn’t come home when he had. I was going to put you back in your bed and slice your throat. Your death would have been written up as yet another one attributed to the killer we’re already looking for.”

Hopelessness washed over her. Nobody would ever suspect Jim of breaking the law in any way. He was a respected deputy. She glanced over to the dead cow once again and then back at Jim.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to shoot you. I’m not even going to cut your throat,” he assured her.

“You can just drive me back to town and we can forget about all of this,” she said desperately. “I won’t tell anyone. I promise, Jim. This can all be our little secret.”

“Yeah, right,” he said dryly. “Fate has already given you a taste of the punishment you deserve. You left me to dance and now you can’t anymore, but it’s not enough. You deserve so much more punishment for destroying my dreams.”

“What are you going to do to me?” she asked fearfully. Any fog in her brain that might have existed after she initially regained consciousness was long gone, replaced by the icy chill of panic.

“I’m not going to kill you,” he replied. “This is the land where we were supposed to live together, the place where we’d eventually be buried together. We’re fifteen miles out of town and the nearest neighbor is seven miles down the road. You can scream your fool head off and nobody is going to hear you.”

He looked around the property and then returned his gaze to her. “There’s no water on the property, no food, and the forecast is for it to dip below freezing tonight. You can’t walk. You’re nothing but a useless cripple. I don’t have to kill you myself. All I have to do is drive away and leave you here. I figure it will only take three or four days for you to die of dehydration or hypothermia, and that’s only if the coyotes don’t get you. They’re thick out here and hungry.”

“Jim, please...” Tears filled her eyes as she realized his intention. “Please, don’t leave me out here.”

“You left me all alone for the last ten years.” His voice rose slightly, the rage again shining in his eyes. “You broke my heart. You ruined me for any other woman.”

Without warning he leapt forward and slammed his boot down on her good ankle. Melanie screamed in pain and attempted to roll away from him, but his boot came down again and again, until there was nothing but pain and her screams and finally blessed unconsciousness.

Chapter 16

A
dam was beside himself as he watched Cameron, Ben Temple and two other deputies process the scene around the wheelchair. Cameron had called in every deputy he had on the payroll, and although Adam knew it wouldn’t be long before the streets were crawling with lawmen asking questions, it wouldn’t be quickly enough.

His head and his heart screamed that Melanie was in deep trouble, and with each minute that ticked by, the odds of finding her alive and well seemed to diminish. Something had to be done. Something had to be done right now, but there was no way to hurry the process.

With each deputy that arrived on scene, Cameron barked out orders, the strain on everyone’s face showing their frustration at the lack of clues.

With everyone working, Cameron broke away from the group and grabbed Adam’s arm. “Let’s head back to her house. We’ll make that the place for everyone to check in as they have something to report.” Cameron raised his collar against a cold wind that had begun to blow in the last hour or so.

Adam frowned. “I don’t want to be cooped up in the house. I need to be out searching for her. She needs me,” he said desperately. He had to do something, whatever it took to find her and bring her home safe.

“And where are you going to start searching for her?” Cameron asked kindly.

Adam gazed at him hollowly as reality slammed into him. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin to search.”

Cameron clapped him on the back. “The best place for both of us to be at the moment is at Melanie’s house to coordinate our search and gather information. Besides, maybe somebody will call, somebody who knows where she is or saw what happened to her. Maybe somebody wants ransom money for her safe return. You need to be there to answer the phone.”

Adam nodded numbly and together he and Cameron started down the sidewalk. Neither of them spoke and Adam suspected Cameron’s mind was as jumbled as his, that Cameron was as confused as he was about what might have taken place in that alley.

Melanie.
His heart cried out her name. How had Melanie gotten there in the first place? She wouldn’t have willingly pushed herself in an alley that smelled of trash. Somebody had forced her in there. But who? And why?

Adam opened the door to the house and immediately entered the security code to unarm the system. He had a feeling there were going to be a lot of people in and out and there was no point in keeping it on at the moment. The worst had already happened.

And it hadn’t happened in the middle of the night. It hadn’t happened in her bedroom. Danger had found her in the middle of the day on Main Street in Grady Gulch.

Emptiness shouted in the house, the absence of Melanie screaming from every corner. Adam paced the kitchen floor as Cameron checked the answering machine for any messages. There was one from Tilly.

“Melanie, are you home yet? It’s been almost an hour and a half since you left. Surely you should have made it to the grocery store and back by now. Are you there?” There was an audible sigh of worry. “Well, call me the minute you get in.”

“Call her back,” Cameron said. “Find out exactly what Melanie said to her before she left here.”

Adam nodded. He punched in Tilly’s number, and when the older woman answered, Cameron hit the speakerphone button so that both of them could hear.

“Tilly, it’s Adam.”

“Adam! Is Melanie with you?”

“No. What time did you talk to her, Tilly?” Adam held the phone tightly against his ear.

“It was a couple of hours ago.” Tilly’s worry was evident in her voice. “Are you at the house? She was just going to the store to pick up some candy for Halloween. She should have been home by now.”

“Tilly, something has happened. We found Melanie’s wheelchair in the alley halfway to the grocery store. We don’t know where she is or what’s happened to her.”

“Oh, Lordy, I’m on my way.”

Before Adam could say another word, Tilly hung up. Adam replaced the receiver with a look at Cameron. “So we know she left here about two hours ago to go to the store for candy. And that’s all we know.” He walked into the living room and sank down on the sofa, his legs unable to hold him upward as a cold wind of despair blew through him.

“Adam, it’s only one-thirty in the afternoon. We have plenty of daylight left to tear this town apart,” Cameron said firmly. “We’ll find her.”

“Whoever took her has a two-hour head start on us. She could be out of the damned county by now!” Adam exclaimed in frantic frustration.

Cameron didn’t answer, as at that moment his cell phone rang. As he spoke to whoever the caller was, Adam got up off the sofa and paced the living room floor.

The photographs of Melanie on the wall haunted him. She was memorialized in them, so vital, so alive. He remembered dancing with her, the beauty of her movements, the shine that had lit her eyes. Her lack of mobility in one leg had dimmed her light for months, but in the past couple of weeks Adam had seen her love of life returning, a new hope filling her eyes.

The idea that somebody now intended to take that away from her was like a piercing arrow through his heart. He wanted the time with her, time to show her that he was the right man for her, that nobody would ever love her as he did.

If he couldn’t convince her that they belonged together, he wanted her to find love with somebody else, to build a future and a family that would enrich her soul as she lived her life.

He stopped in his tracks as the front door flew open and Tilly came in.

“Have you found her?”

Adam shook his head, too devastated to reply verbally. Tilly began to weep and Adam reached out and pulled the bony older woman into his arms, feeling as if she were crying the tears from his aching heart.

“We’ll find her, Tilly,” he said, finally releasing her as her sobs began to subside.

“Who would do something like this? Who would be so evil?” She sank down on the sofa and looked from Adam to Cameron. “You have to find her, Cameron. She can’t walk. She can’t run. There’s no way she can escape from somebody who is holding her.”

“We’re doing everything we can,” Cameron replied as he dropped his cell phone in his pocket. “That was Jim. He’s talking to all the shopkeepers along Main Street to see if anyone saw anything. We know now she never made it to the grocery store, so whoever took her did so as she was heading to the store.”

They all turned toward the window at the sound of the wind whistling around the side of the house. It sounded cold and bleak, and Adam felt the icy chill seeping through his very bones as he thought of Melanie.

The next couple of hours were sheer agony. Tilly busied herself keeping the coffee hot and making sandwiches for the deputies who came in to report to Cameron, while Adam stood at the window, his brain racing for answers that refused to appear.

He hadn’t seen any danger when he left the house. He hadn’t sensed that his absence would put her at risk in any way. Otherwise he would have never left her alone. He’d thought she’d be safe.

“This is so unlike the man you’ve been chasing,” he said to Cameron when the latest report of nothing had come in. “Why has he changed how he operates? Why would he attempt to go after Melanie again if it meant doing everything different than he’s done before? Why take such a risk to kidnap her off Main Street instead of waiting until nightfall and taking somebody else?” Adam frowned at his own questions as he waited for Cameron to respond.

The sheriff raked his hand through his hair and drew a deep breath. “I don’t know. This all doesn’t make sense if we look at his previous pattern.”

“And you’re sure Kevin Naperson wasn’t responsible for the first two murders?” Adam asked, knowing the young man had been suspected in the first murder.

“At first he was the best suspect we had when Candy was murdered and we thought it might be possible that he killed Shirley to take the heat off himself for Candy’s death, but since then my gut instinct has made me doubt he was involved in either murder.”

“Maybe this isn’t your killer at all,” Adam said thoughtfully. “Maybe this really is something personal. We need to find Craig Jenkins,” he said urgently. “He’s the only person who really has anything to gain by Melanie being dead.”

“Already on it,” Cameron replied. “Mike Waddell is on his way to Evanston to find Jenkins.” He looked at his wristwatch. “If Jenkins has Melanie, then we should know something in the next twenty minutes or so.”

At that moment Jim Collins walked in the door and Adam could tell by the grim expression on his face that he had no news.

“Nobody I talked to in the stores or on the streets saw anything. They didn’t see Melanie. They didn’t see anybody acting strange or out of the ordinary. It’s like some giant bird swooped out of the sky and picked her up.”

“Yeah, well, if I find out the name of that bird, I’m going to kill him,” Adam replied, his voice not raging with vengeance but rather calm with unmistakable promise.

* * *

Pain. Excruciating pain brought Melanie slowly back to consciousness. She raised herself up and with trembling fingers pulled down her sock to look at the damage. She gasped as she saw the swollen, bruised skin. Her ankle felt broken...shattered. She began to weep with the sharp pain and the fear that now she had two feet that couldn’t work.

She had no idea how long she was lost in a sea of sobs. She lay on the ground in a fetal ball and cried until she could cry no more.

Finally she rolled onto her back and winced at the hardness of the ground beneath her as she stared up at the sky. A cold breeze had begun to blow, sending bright blue clouds dancing across the sky. Blue...like Adam’s eyes.

Her heart constricted painfully. She’d never see him again. She’d never see anyone again. She would become a mystery in town. Whatever happened to Melanie Brooks? People would talk about her disappearance in the café, wonder while shopping in the stores where the killer had taken her, where he had possibly buried her.

Adam would be devastated. She squeezed her eyes closed tightly once again. She knew with a woman’s intuition that her disappearance would haunt him for a long time to come. But eventually he’d move on. He’d find the right woman, a woman who could walk beside him, run after his children and be the partner he deserved.

She’d hoped that thought would bring her happiness, but it didn’t. She didn’t want to think about Adam with another woman. She would die out here knowing that he was the man for her, her soul mate, and she’d been foolish enough to reject him, reject what might have been.

Craig Jenkins would win. Her death would assure that he got her house. Anger drove her up to a sitting position once again and she slammed her hand against her bad leg.

A useless cripple. That was what Jim had called her and that was what she was, nothing but a helpless cripple. It was because of this that it had been so easy for Jim to take her, so easy for him to bring her here and assure her death.

Thank God he hadn’t touched her other than stomping on her foot. He was crazy. As crazy as some of the mental cases she’d seen wandering or panhandling in Times Square when she lived in the big city. If he had tried to kiss her, had attempted to molest her in any way, she would have died on the spot.

Nobody would know that she wasn’t a new victim of the killer who had been on everyone’s mind. Nobody would realize that one of the men sworn to protect the town suffered from a deep obsession with her and there was no reason why in the future he wouldn’t do the same thing with another woman.

She hated that Cameron wouldn’t know that there was not one killer, but two in the town he loved. She hated that he would never know that one of his trusted deputies was twisted enough to kill.

She wrapped her arms around herself as the wind seemed to pierce through her. An icy shiver walked up her spine and she bit back more threatening tears as the stabbing pain in her ankle continued.

Tears would accomplish nothing. She could accomplish nothing. All she could do was sit here and wait for death to claim her. Already she was thirsty, as if knowing that she couldn’t have a drink had mentally created a massive thirst.

She’d go mad before death ever came, she thought as she gazed around the empty pasture. How long would it take her to die out here all alone? Days? A week? A frantic sob once again escaped her.

Helpless cripple.

She didn’t want to be that person. She was so much more than that. She took care of her own needs. She cooked for herself, cleaned the downstairs of her house. She laughed, she cried and she loved. She was a person, not a cripple.

Adam. His name sang through her. She’d thought of herself as a useless prisoner in a wheelchair until he’d come along. He’d opened the world to her again, building her a ramp to leave her prison, showing her a way she could make a living once again and allowing her to dance in his arms.

When he looked at her, she knew he didn’t see a helpless cripple. He saw a woman he desired, a strong woman who he believed was capable of doing anything she set her mind to. And she was that woman. She had to believe that.

Once again she looked around, desperate to find some way to help herself, unwilling to simply sit in the middle of the field and wait for death to find her.

Jim couldn’t have thought of a better way to torture her than to leave her here. A bullet to the head would have been kinder than the slow, agonizing punishment he’d given her.

In the distance she saw a stand of trees. She might have found them a windbreak against the cold air blowing from the north, but they might as well be a hundred miles away.

She looked in the opposite direction and her gaze landed on the tractor. It looked as distant as the trees and once again she was overwhelmed with her inadequacies.

She had a leg that wouldn’t work and now an ankle through which pain continued to shoot, as if all the bones inside had been crunched.

Once again she looked at the tractor. It looked as if it hadn’t been used for a long time, but what if it would run? What if it could be her means of escape?

The very idea seemed ridiculous. Even if it did run, she’d still have to get to it, and that wasn’t possible. Nothing was possible because she was a useless cripple.