The Homecoming (43 page)

“
If
Celia actually was pregnant,” Kara said. Eve Vernon wouldn’t exactly make the most credible witness on the stand. “But I haven’t bought into the idea of the cowboy as the father from the beginning.”

“That means it could have been Gerald in your house that day,” John said. “Trying to retrieve the file.”

“My thinking exactly,” Kara said.

“I sure as hell wouldn’t put it past the guy,” Sax agreed.

Only minutes ago she’d been floating on air after a perfect day. Now, although she was grateful for Cait’s help, the revelations left Kara feeling numb and angry at the same time.

“I need you to take Trey home,” she told her mother. “But don’t mention any of this.”

“Of course I won’t,” Faith said. She put her hand on Kara’s arm. “You’ll be careful.”

“You bet.” Kara turned to Kyle. “I want to go home and change into my uniform. Then you and John and I can pay a little visit to Gerald.”

“I’m coming along,” Sax said.

Kara realized she should’ve seen this coming. She folded her arms across the front of the flowered dress. “While I appreciate all your help regarding Celia, and finding that bullet that filled in the final piece of the puzzle of Dad’s death, you
are
a civilian.”

“We have civilian ride-alongs,” John pointed out.

Terrific. Now they were ganging up on her.

“Not for arrests.”

“If I have to, I’ll go out there myself,” Sax said. “But you’re not going to keep me away.”

The warrior was back. In spades. Kara also knew he was right. Sax might respect her ability to do her job. But there was also no way she was going to be able to keep him away from this.

“It’s not because I don’t think you can handle it,” he said, demonstrating that ability to seemingly read her mind yet again. “But I’ve got a hell of a lot invested in this. Celia was a friend. Gerald not only killed the father of the woman I love—he probably also beat the hell out of you. Which makes this extremely personal.”

“That’s my concern.” She was aware of everyone watching the debate. “That you’ll make this personal, go vigilante on me, and screw up my arrest. If Gerald is my unsub, and we’ve no proof he is, I want him behind bars. Forever.”

“I’ll stay out of your way.” Heaving a sigh, he took her arm and pulled her a little aside, away from their audience, and lowered his voice. “Look, Kara. I understand you need a clean arrest. But you’ve got to understand how I feel. Now, I’m asking you to trust me on this. But if you don’t let me come with you, I am going to come. One of the things I fought for was a free country. Which means you can’t prevent a civilian from driving down a street.”

“No fair playing the SEAL hero card,” she muttered.

“I care for you. I care about your son, who could have lost his mother that day in your house if you weren’t such a strong fighter. I cared about Celia, and I even liked your dad, though I suspect I sure as hell wasn’t his favorite person. And I spent enough time as a SEAL to know teamwork. I’ll admit I’d love to beat the guy to a bloody pulp. But despite having a few PTSD problems, I’m not out of control. I’ll stay out of your way,” he repeated.

They were wasting time arguing. And Kara did trust him.

She nodded. Then turned to the others.

“Let’s roll.”

Unfortunately, like so much of police work, the arrest didn’t go according to plan.

When they arrived at the Gardner home, his wife informed them that her husband wasn’t home.

“Is he working late at the bank, ma’am?” Kara asked in her most collected cop tone, which was totally at odds with the turmoil churning inside her.

“That’s what he said.” Kara thought she detected the scent of liquor on Mrs. Gardner’s breath. “That’s what he
always
says.”

“But?” Kara asked, even as she guessed the answer.

“He’s with his slut, of course.”

“I’m sorry. But would you happen to know who, exactly, your husband is seeing?”

“Seeing.” The woman’s laugh was a little too loud for the circumstances. Yep, she’d definitely been drinking. “Isn’t that a lovely euphemism? The woman he’s been
fucking
is that slut Realtor.”

“Sherry Archer?” Kara exchanged a quick look with Sax, who was standing nearby, silent, as he’d promised, but didn’t appear nearly as surprised as she was by that piece of information.

“Do you know another slut Realtor in Shelter Bay?”

Kara wasn’t about to touch that line. “Thank you, ma’am. I’m going to request that you not contact your husband.”

“Are you going to arrest him for something?”

“We’d like to speak with him,” John said.

“Ah.” Mrs. Gardner nodded. “So now he’s a person of interest.”

That statement had Kara deciding that Edna Lawton wasn’t the only person in town who watched too many TV shows.

“We just need to question him,” she said.

“Well, do me a favor.”

“And what would that be?”

“If Gerald gives you any excuse to shoot him, aim for his goddamn balls.”

 

Sherry Archer’s Tudor was, unsurprisingly, in the same gated subdivision. The mountaintop location provided a spectacular view of the town, the bay, and the ocean beyond. Unfortunately, it also allowed Gerald Gardner, who—in a bit of unlucky timing for them—had just left the house, to see the two patrol cars headed up the hill.

If he’d had a lick of sense, or ever watched
Cops
, Gardner would have known that the odds of a civilian escaping in a car chase were, well, pretty much zilch. Apparently he neither watched the reality show or had no sense, because he leaped into the Lincoln parked in front of Sherry’s house, gunned the engine, then rabbited past them back down the hill.

In order to keep as much of the natural woods as possible, the roads zigzagged through the subdivision.

Grateful for her cop drivers’ training, Kara downshifted as she approached another twist in the road, then, although cornering in a cruiser going at least fifty miles per hour wasn’t for the faint of heart, punched the gas.

Although Gerald had a head start, and they’d had to make a U-turn, she caught up with him. John was close on their tail, lights flashing, sirens screaming.

“Since we don’t have anyone to throw down a spike strip to shred his tires, I’m going to try to stop him,” she decided. “Because if he gets into town, this could get dangerous.”

“Guy’s an idiot,” Sax said. “He’s got to know he’s not going to get away.”

“Bad guys panic,” she said. “I’ve had them bolt on me before. It doesn’t make any sense, but hey, if they thought like the rest of us, they wouldn’t be bad guys.”

“Roger that.”

Continuing to rely on training, Kara slowed enough to bump the Lincoln’s bumper. Once. Twice. A third time.

At that point, the banker should have caught a clue and stopped.

But apparently he was as clueless as he was heartless, because he sped up, veered wildly, and took the next turn on two wheels.

“That should do it,” Sax said.

Just as predicted, the wheels went off the pavement, scattering gravel before settling into a shallow ditch on the side of the shoulderless road.

Kara slammed to a halt beside the Lincoln, jumped from the cruiser, and pulled the banker out from beneath the deflating air bag, which had exploded upon impact. Sax was right behind her.

“Gerald Gardner, you’re under arrest. For homicide.” Probably more than one, if he turned out to have murdered Celia Vernon. “And resisting arrest.”

Kara took some pleasure in the fact that the air bag had broken his nose. And didn’t she know just how that felt? “As well as reckless driving.” She felt another little zing as she snapped the metal cuffs onto his wrists. “And I’m sure, by the time we get to the station, I’ll be able to think up some other charges.”

“I want my attorney,” he said, interrupting her Miranda reading. Amazingly, despite the blood streaming down his face onto the front of his white shirt and a bump the size of an acorn on his forehead, he’d still managed to find some bluster.

“Fine,” John said gruffly. “You can call him when we get to the station.” He turned to Kara. “You had all the fun of the chase. Ben was my friend. Let my last official duty be to lock his killer up.”

“He’s all yours.”

Kara watched as the two deputies put him into the back of their patrol. They did not, she noted, warn Gardner about lowering his head so he wouldn’t bump it on the roof. Which he proceeded to do. Yet another clue he’d never watched
Cops.

After the cruiser headed toward town, Sax took Kara in his arms. “You’re shaking.”

The red taillights disappeared over the hill as Kara clung to him. Tightly. “So are you.”

It began to rain. As they stood there, drawing strength and comfort from each other, neither Sax nor Kara noticed.

 

Summer was drawing to a close. The tourists had returned to their cities, and a touch of fall was in the air.

After years living in southern California, Kara had rediscovered how special having four seasons again could be. And while autumn was, hands down, her favorite season, this year it was proving even more special—because of Sax being in her and Trey’s lives.

Despite her advanced pregnancy, Cait McKade had returned to Shelter Bay—this time with her husband, who hovered over her like an overprotective guard dog—to testify at Gerald Gardner’s trial. The crowded courtroom burst into applause when the jury foreman declared him guilty of one count of manslaughter in Celia Vernon’s case, one count of first-degree murder for Ben Blanchard’s death, and assault and battery with intent to kill in Kara’s attack.

The same lawyer the Fletchers had hired managed a plea bargain to kick the first murder charge down to manslaughter, claiming that Gardner had accidently killed Celia during an argument in the cave on the beach after he’d told her he wasn’t going to marry her.

According to his story, which Kara didn’t believe for a moment, the pregnant girl had lunged at him in a temper. He’d dodged her attack and she’d hit her head on the cliff. Panicked, the eighteen-year-old Gardner had buried her body beneath the sand and piled driftwood and boulders on top of it.

Kara wasn’t happy about the plea bargain, since she knew, in her gut, that it was predicated on a lie. And she hated that Gardner had gotten away with the crime for so many years. But she did manage to achieve both closure and satisfaction as she watched the van take him off to the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.

“Are you two going to get married?” Trey asked one day after they’d come home from a shopping trip for school supplies.

“Well, I was going to talk to you about that,” Sax said. “See if you had any advice for me, since popping the question to your mom is a pretty big deal.”

“She likes flowers,” he said. “And you’re going to have to get her a ring. But she doesn’t like diamonds.”

“
She
just happens to be in the room,” Kara pointed out. “And, for the record, I don’t know a woman who doesn’t like diamonds. I just don’t think they fit my lifestyle.”

“How about this?”

Kara drew in a quick, stunned breath as Sax pulled a small black velvet box from his pocket and handed it to her.

The ring lay on a bed of white satin. Three stones had been set into a woven, white gold band. “I had it made by that Celtic jeweler up in Cannon Beach,” he told Kara. “Where we bought those earrings.”

She touched the Celtic circles in question. “She makes beautiful things.”

“I told her I wanted three stones to represent each of us, and she came up with these.

“The tigereye represents the dawn, that silver hematite is the dusk, and this obsidian”—he pointed at the heart-shaped stone in the middle—“is supposed to be midnight. I figured that also covers all the hours in the day that I love you.”

She took the ring from the box and slipped it on her finger. “It’s lovely.” The thought that had gone into it was even more so.

“She told me they’re called sky stones,” he explained carefully, as if hoping he’d made the right choice. “Apparently they were used by early druids for divination and to predict the future.”

She held the ring up, admiring how it gleamed so warmly in the ruby sunset light streaming in through the window. “I believe it’s already working.”

“Really, Mom?” Trey asked.

“Really. Because I predict a wonderful and long future together.”

She lifted her smiling face to Sax’s and rewarded him with a long, loving kiss.

“A future of mushy stuff,” Trey muttered.

“Get used to it, kid,” Sax said. “Because you’re going to be stuck with us for at least fifty years.”

Trey grinned at that, but Kara thought she detected just a bit of sadness in his eyes.

Later that night, after he and Sax had finished reading the latest in the Captain Underpants saga, she slipped into her son’s room and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Are you okay with Sax and me getting married?”

“Sure. I was hoping you would from the beginning. Well, almost the beginning,” he admitted. “I didn’t want to like him. Because of Dad.”

“I know.”

“Do you think Dad’s okay with this?”

“Absolutely.” She skimmed a hand over his hair. He’d had it cut short like Sax’s, and while she understood the need to emulate his role model, she missed the corn-silk strands. The style also made him look older than his almost nine years, which were already racing by too fast.

“You know what I really feel bad about?”

“What?”

“I never got to tell him good-bye. Or that I love him and I’m sorry about getting mad at him for getting shot.”

“He understands that.”

“That’s what Sax said. Back when I first told him.”