Romance: JADEN: An MMA Fighter Romance (Bad Boy Tattoo Romance) (New Adult Pregnancy Short Stories) (57 page)

“Miss,” William said, his eyes wide, pupils blown wide in panic. “You do not understand the situation.”

“What part of you murdered half a dozen girls do I not understand?” Candice asked, voice going up a few octaves as William began following her retreat. Would he kill her, too, for calling out for help?

“I told you before,” William said, enunciating each word carefully, his tone dangerously soft. “I did not murder a single woman.”

“Then why is it your face that is up on the wanted poster hanging in the tavern, the grocery and the post office?” Candice challenged, taking yet another step back. To her horror, he followed it and reached out, fingers only inches away from her wrist. She yanked her hand back and out of reach, skittering as far as she could.

With a lunge, William reached out and grasped Candice’s forearm, and just as she opened her mouth to scream, a hand that tasted of salty iron clamped down over it.

Candice struggled wildly, but although she probably had a few good pounds on the man, he was pure muscle and shoved her against the wall, using the leverage to keep her still.

“I will not hurt you,” he said in a voice that was exceptionally soft, too close to her, “but I need you to listen to me. I have not killed anyone. I was set up, framed for the murders by a man I owe money to.”

Candice looked at him wildly, noticing that his eyes were not only one color, but many, mixed together, and that he smelled of cedar, something that brought back the kind of memories that made Candice nostalgic and melancholy.

“Now I am going to let you go, but you must promise not to scream, and I will prove to you that it was not I who murdered those poor girls, but him.” William jerked his head towards the man who lay in the alley, seemingly unconscious, for he had not moved an inch since William had gotten off of him upon seeing Candice standing in the alley.

Candice nodded, her mind spinning wildly. She thought that these kinds of conspiracies only happened in the penny books she bought from the post office on the rare occasion she had the money to spend. It sounded like something straight from one of the novels she had bought only days before and devoured with a sort of voraciousness that only someone who had nothing better to do with their time could manage.

But she would not scream. She was intrigued, Candice had to admit. Whether or not this was simply a ploy to get her to let her guard down, she would not scream for help again. She nodded slowly, once, and then twice, two jerky movements that barely passed for nods at all, and then William took his strangely translucent eyes and cedar smell a respectable distance away from her.

“You obviously have read the reports,” William observed without turning to face Candice as he stalked back over to the prone figure lying on the ground.

“Not the entire report,” Candice corrected. She did not feel inclined to add that it had been snatched from her before she could finish it.

“Was it too gruesome to take in?” William asked, and for the briefest moment, Candice could have sworn that she saw a glimmer of humor in William’s eyes before he turned and looked at the man’s face once more. It was battered beyond recognition, more than half of it covered in blood and bruised skin, and Candice winced as she got closer and saw the extent of the damage.

“No,” she snapped, angling a narrowed look in William’s direction before glancing back down at the man. “I simply did not have the time to finish it. It is hard work, being a barmaid.”

“I can imagine,” William said, and Candice wondered if he was mocking her. It was impossible to tell, with the lack of any sort of inflection in his voice or stain of emotion in his countenance.

She kneeled down by the man. “All I see is that you have done a fine job of putting him in a very miserable position.”

“His name is Maurice Quincy,” William said. “And I assume you know who I am.”

Candice shot him an eloquent look before examining the unconscious man. He had nice clothing, nicer than William’s, and newer as well. There was a fresh coating of dust on his black leather shoes, but Candice knew that they had been polished to a brilliant shine before he had stepped out onto the parched earth of their small town. “He happens to be rich,” Candice concluded. “Although I have no clue as to why that helps you convince me that you are not the man who killed the women.”

“If you—“ he began to reach down, to show her something, and Candice knew that it was something that would have convinced her from the sure gleam in his eye, when there was a shout from the end of the alley and the sound of running footsteps.

Candice stood quickly spinning to face this newest threat, and found the sheriff and deputy bearing down on her with guns drawn. She threw her hands up, partially to shield her face, and partially to show her innocence, but they breezed past her as if she did not exist.

“William Smithson,” the sheriff, a robust man with the sort of mustache that had always reminded Candice of a walrus, one of those creatures from a faraway land that she would never be able to visit, because she was stuck behind the counter of a bar. “You are under arrest for the murder of six women and the obstruction of justice. You will be dead by morning. Are you alright, Miss Candice?” he asked, turning to spare Candice a glance. She nodded and swallowed, putting a hand to her throat to calm the wild beating of her heart.

What had William been about to tell her? His eyes, which had been alight with emotions before, were now dead, and Candice felt some sort of foreign pang run through her at the sight. She wanted to see his eyes alight with emotions once more, that smile teasing the corners of his lips.

Before she could utter a single word to him, the deputy, who looked like a squatter, even more robust version of the sheriff shoved him away. “You will not need to worry about your safety any longer, miss,” he said, giving her a smile that she supposed would have once charmed her. “And I suppose you will want to come and pick up your reward. You were, after all, the person who found Mr. Smithson.”

Candice was speechless. This was all moving so quickly.

“I—I will come with you now,” she said without meaning to. She had meant to say that she would come by tomorrow with her father, but some part of her wanted to hear what William had been trying to tell her.

The Deputy and Sheriff shared a look that was indecipherable to Candice, and then the Sheriff nodded. “If you will follow us down to the station, ma’am.”

Candice nodded and waited until they had sufficiently tied William up. He stood with his chin tucked to his chest, utterly still, tad-too-long hair covering his face. Candice wished that she could look him in the eye, explain that she had never meant for this to happen—but then, and was that not what she had wanted? For this dangerous killer to be captured? Surely, he was simply trying to lure her in to make her an easy target—his next target.

Candice felt chilled. Surely he wouldn’t—but would he not? She shook her head. The conflicting feelings raged against her, the knowledge that she had likely just brushed death that crashed against the honest, sure look in William’s eyes as he had started to extend his hand out towards the man’s body. Candice glanced back—he was still unconscious on the ground. After she had collected her money, perhaps she could come question him, get the real answer, and do away with her doubts.

She followed the men to the station, mulling over her thoughts.

###

“Give me one reason to believe you,” Candice said, wrapping her fingers around the bars of the cell.

William did not glance up right away. He was huddled in the cell, on the bar cot in a way that made him look much smaller than he was—a good four inches taller than Candice, and even then, she was understating. She was by no means a short girl.

The candle light softened everything, made the harsh lines of the jail into something that could perhaps pass for a home—save the bars that separated her from William.

She had been here for hours, and the darkness had gathered around the edges of the sky and crept slowly over it in the time that it took to get William into the cell, fill out the paperwork, telegraph the marshals and give Candice her reward. The money bag weighed heavily at Candice’s hip, a reassuring sort of weight that might mean her freedom. However, before she could go home and celebrate, she had to know for sure. She would never rest if she ever found out that her freedom had been gained at the expense of a completely innocent man. Well, perhaps not completely innocent, for there had been that look of complete and utter violence in William’s dead gaze as he had beaten that man to a pulp. The man who had been gone when Candice had gone to put the majority of the money in a safe place upstairs from the tavern in her father’s office. When he got home, he would find it, and perhaps it would ease whatever complaints he would have about her leaving the tavern unattended for hours.

William finally glanced up, and she saw that he had a bruise along one cheekbone that had not been there before. She drew in a sharp breath, wondering when he had gotten it. His eyes were unreadable in this light, such a strange color. He looked at Candice for several moments before unfolding himself slowly, methodically, as if he had all the time in the world, though he was to hang in less than seventy-two hours, if they got word from the marshals fairly quickly.

“I have many reasons,” William said softly, his voice low and musical. It did something strange to Candice’s mind. She felt herself blush at the tone alone, and was glad for the deep shadows that were all around her. They would hide her traitorous cheeks.

William did not attempt to come closer, and Candice was strangely torn by this. She felt a little bit of relief; he would not try to kill her then. Part of her wanted to smell that cedar again, feel the weight of his muscled arm against her once more; where his hand had wrapped around her forearm still tingled no matter how much she rubbed at it. “Well, I would be very inclined to hear them.”

“What if I do not want to give them?” William’s voice was low, dangerous. Something like what a killer might sound like before they gutted their victim. Candice shivered, but it was not entirely from fear, not if she was being completely truthful with herself.

“I apologize for getting you in here,” Candice said, trying to keep her voice level. She was amazed when it came out in a smooth, unaffected tone. “But the past is the past, and the only way you will be able to get out is by having me help you. So whether you are alright with this arrangement or not, I am all that you have.”

“That is true,” William said, and this time, he did step closer, two steps, which ate up half of the distance between them. The cell was painfully small, something made for maybe a few hours to hold someone. Not days.

But then, what did the sheriff care about an animal that murdered several innocent women? Candice knew that she should move back; there was doubt in her mind that this man was innocent, but she did not twitch a single muscle. Instead, she leaned in closer, pressing her cheek against one bar, and the rest of her face through the other. “Would you like anything? Water? Food?”

“The men of this town were nice enough to provide me with both,” William said, and there was the barest hint of sarcasm in his voice. Candice frowned and glanced at the floor, where a silver tray rested, untouched. Stale bread and water from the horse’s trough. She swallowed.

“I apologize,” she said, and this time, she actually meant it. Even if he had murdered someone, or multiple people—even those girls—she felt responsible for his mistreatment. Innocent until proven guilty, she thought suddenly. Yes, that was something that she had learned from her father, and she would follow it.

“Do not bother,” William said, waving an elegant hand in front of himself vaguely, as if he could dispel the horribleness of it all with that simple gesture. “It is no fault of yours.”

He stepped closer once again, and Candice drew her face back, but did not remove her fingers from the bars. William was close enough for her to smell him, and she allowed herself two deep draughts of that smell, closing her eyes briefly, and saw her mother’s face, clear as day; clearer than it had been for years. She felt a pang go through her and fought back sudden tears. She would not cry in front of William. Instead, she took another sharp breath in—damn him and that smell—and focused on the matter at hand. “You say that you are innocent,” she said, prompting him. “How can I prove this? There needs to be evidence that will allow people to believe this, for whoever botched these murders did an exceptionally good job of it.”

“I know,” William said, and there it was again, the barest hint of emotion in his voice. If Candice could have worked up the nerve, she knew she would have seen that barely-there smile tracing its way over his lips. But she could not look at him, not when he was so close.

He took another step forward, and Candice drew in another sharp breath. Moving away now would mean submission, and she did not want to admit that this man scared her. This could very well be a test, to prove to him if she believed him or not. While she was not completely sure of his innocence—that dead, violent look in his eyes would not fade from her mind—she knew that he would not hurt her, not here, and not now.

“I planned to be a lawyer before this entire ordeal,” William said after a few moments of silence. She could hear his breathing, slow and even in the quiet. There was no one out on the streets tonight, no one that dared to leave their houses when they knew that they had a murderer in their midst, and the complete lack of noise was the most uncommon of occurrences in their little town of stagnation.