Читать книгу Deception - Elizabeth Goddard - Страница 13

THREE

The next morning, Colin walked the trail with one of his officers, Terry Stratford, along with Cade and David Warren, who were friends and had been part of the search and rescue for Jewel.

He almost wished Dead Falls Canyon, both the river and several waterfalls, were far from town, where they’d be less of a danger to the people under his jurisdiction, which included the city and borough of Mountain Cove and encompassed two thousand square miles, most of that wilderness in the Tongass National Forest.

But the majestic scenery and unparalleled adventures of the region were all part of the package. The splendor, the pristine nature and magnificent views brought tourists. One of the many reasons people chose to live here.

But beauty had turned deadly more than once.

After his officers and forest rangers had searched the area yesterday and came up empty-handed, he’d decided that Jewel’s attacker was long gone, and there wasn’t reason enough to close off the whole region to nature enthusiasts.

Today’s revisiting of the crime scene hadn’t turned up any evidence or clues either, so far. Jewel’s party hadn’t been the only one to hike the trails or view the falls, so there was no way to try to trace anyone’s tracks.

Colin maintained a keen sense of his surroundings in case someone was watching him. He had that sensation as they hiked the trail, but it could simply be curious hikers wondering what had brought the police out on the trails today.

They’d walked the five-mile circular trail that led to the top where Jewel claimed to have stood and looked down. This was some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, and now it would likely be ruined for Jewel unless she could somehow put those events out of her mind.

He was asking for the impossible. Colin had moved to Mountain Cove to escape his own devastating experience in Texas. He hoped Jewel wouldn’t have to take such drastic measures.

Under normal circumstances, he’d have his officers roam the woods now, searching again for evidence, rather than coming out here himself. He had enough paperwork stacked on his desk and phone calls to answer to last a lifetime, and the tourist season was only beginning.

But this wasn’t normal. This was Jewel Caraway. The thought of losing her, that moment when he’d thought she could have been dead, had forced him to look deep, even though he knew he couldn’t make it too personal and had to tread carefully.

As police chief, loving someone would only cloud his judgment and get someone killed one day—he’d already paid that price. He would never let that happen again. He found it easy to care about someone from a distance, but better not to care at all.

David and Cade stood next to him, staring down at the crushing force of rushing water. Listened to the roar. Felt the moisture cloud envelop them. No wonder she hadn’t heard someone approach from behind until the instant before impact. And she certainly hadn’t known to be wary of someone who would push her over.

“I’m still wondering how nature could push a body under and keep it there, and that body still survive,” Cade said.

“Maybe it’s more the nature of God that she survived.” It was easy to believe that Jewel had a special place in God’s heart like she had in Colin’s.

“Why would someone try to kill her?” David asked. “Was it just a random act of violence?”

He voiced the question they were all wondering, but had no answer for yet. David had endured a fight to protect the woman he loved not long ago and understood better than most there had to be a reason. A secret not shared.

Finding the person responsible for the attacks against Tracy had taken far too long. Colin could still hear the questions from the city council echoing in his ears, and they mingled with the new questions. The same questions.

What are you going to do about it? How are you going to stop it before it happens again?

* * *

Two women approached the falls from the trail, pulling Colin from his thoughts. He nodded to David, Cade and Terry. They’d seen enough for now. They moved away from the falls and headed back down the trail.

“What do you know about her sister and brother-in-law?” Colin asked.

“Not much,” David said. “They’re newlyweds, I hear. I imagine it means a lot to Jewel that they’ve come to see her, since she’s been estranged from her family for a long time. Once when Silas and I were out fighting wildfires in the interior, he shared a little about Jewel. What a rare find she was.”

Colin wouldn’t argue with him there. Her name said it all.

“She comes from a wealthy family, and they didn’t think Silas was good enough for her. When her parents made it clear they disapproved of him, he almost walked away. He loved her too much to tear her away, but in the end, he’d been selfish, after all. He couldn’t let her go. They were young and impulsive.”

“And that’s why she hasn’t been in touch with her family all these years?” Colin asked.

“They didn’t give her much choice—her family disinherited her when she chose to marry him.”

“What kind of parents did that? Disowned or disinherited their child?” Cade asked.

“That’s just weird,” Terry spoke as he led them down the trail.

Colin couldn’t say much. Guilt and shame over how he’d treated his own family had followed him here to Alaska. He’d left his parents behind in Texas and, as they aged, his sister was forced to take sole responsibility for their care. Colin hadn’t been much of a son or a brother, but after what happened, he saw himself as a burden to his family—one they would be better off without. They must see what he wanted to forget every time they looked at him.

“She left it all behind—her family and the wealth—to follow Silas to Alaska.” David kicked a rock down the path.

“I can see why he would think she was special,” Colin said. “She must have loved the man deeply. It’s not easy to live here or to give up your family. To give up wealth on top of that.”

“You know, she could love deeply again, right?” David studied Colin.

Cade and Terry walked together up a ways. Colin was glad they hadn’t heard David’s question. He was just prying into Colin’s personal thoughts. Either that or nudging him toward a place he had no business going.

They’d almost made the trailhead where they would kayak back to Mountain Cove, following the path Jewel’s group had taken in their search. Colin eyed his friend. Understood the meaning behind his words.

“Jewel deserves someone far better than me.” And if she had a wealthy family, she was more like Katelyn than he’d realized. That wealth had come between them more than once. Her wealthy family had questioned his investigation, blamed him for her murder as if he hadn’t already been weighed down by it.

“So what do you think? Who do you believe is a suspect?”

“Hard to say at this point. The fact she has a wealthy family could be motivation for murder.”

“But how if she’s been disinherited?” David asked. “There has to be more to the story.”

“There always is.”

* * *

Meral had gone down to the kitchen to get Jewel a cup of green tea. Jewel was glad to have a minute of relative privacy. She was glad that she had people who cared about her enough to want to help her, but the hovering was already starting to feel overwhelming.

She definitely didn’t like being confined to her room, even though her body was sore and she needed to recover from her injuries. Not to mention she had guests to attend to, but neither could she let any of them see her like this. She’d give it a day or two, leaving running the B and B to her staff, and hope it didn’t take a week for her bruised body to heal. Jewel would give anything to forget about the fall and her injuries and to go back to life as usual. She needed normalcy. To get that, she would have to stop taking the painkillers. They made her groggy, and she couldn’t think straight.

When she sat up, dizziness swept over her. She made the mistake of glancing in the mirror over the dresser, and her mouth dried up.

Chief Winters saw me like this?

She shoved thoughts of what he must think of her out of her mind. His opinion shouldn’t count. She couldn’t care about that. After Silas’s death, she almost hadn’t survived the heartache. She’d given up her life and family to be with him, and now all she had left of that life were memories and heartache. The price of loving someone was too high.

She couldn’t survive that pain again.

So for now she had to focus on other things until the unwelcome feelings in her heart went away.

One question nagged her. Why would someone want to kill her? Had it simply been random? Or had she been targeted? Jewel had no enemies that she knew about. No reason for someone to push her over.

Unless...

My secret.

Jewel pressed her hands over her heart. God, please no. She needed the secret to remain dead and buried. She wasn’t the same young woman who had made that mistake. Besides, no one knew about it, so no. That couldn’t be it.

She was back to her question. And she didn’t know why someone would try to kill her. When she was a child, her parents had taught her to be on her guard, not to trust easily, because there were too many people in the world who might try to hurt her or kidnap her because of their money. But it had been years since that had been an issue for her. No one in Alaska had even known she’d once been wealthy. Until Meral and Buck arrived a few days ago.

Now suddenly her life had been threatened.

Could the two incidents be related?

And what of Meral’s new husband, Buck? What did Meral really know about the man?

Jewel should be ecstatic that she had a second chance with the family she’d given up to come to Alaska. She thought she’d gotten over that hurt, too, until Meral. She wanted to be happy to see her sister, who had only been fifteen when Jewel had left. In fact, she had not known how much she’d missed her family.

But something was wrong. Very wrong. She should thank Buck Cambridge for bringing Meral—a wedding gift, he’d said. He’d found Meral’s long-lost sister. But Jewel wasn’t sure she really wanted to be found.

Something about Buck disturbed her. He didn’t look at Meral the way Jewel’s husband had looked at her when they’d fallen in love.

But who was Jewel to judge? How could she bring up her misgivings about Buck with Meral, a sister she barely knew? They were only just reconnecting. Getting to know each other again. It wasn’t her place. She wouldn’t do anything to destroy this chance at having her family again. If Jewel questioned her sister about Buck, then she would sound just like their parents had sounded when Jewel had fallen in love.

Those memories came rushing back, crushing the breath from her.

Jewel shoved from the bed. She wouldn’t do that to Meral. She’d give her sister—a grown woman in her thirties, an experienced woman who had already been married before—the benefit of a doubt.

Jewel would let Chief Winters investigate and see what came of it without mentioning her suspicions about Buck.

She could trust Colin Winters. He was a good man and a good chief of police and had served Mountain Cove well. Maybe there were some in town who blamed him for the rise in the crime rate in recent years, accusing him of not being hard enough on suspects and criminals. Then others blamed him and his officers for using too much force. So much pressure from the community pushing him in different directions had to be brutal on him.

Jewel had never blamed him. People wanted to remove God from the equation of life and expect law and order to reign in His place. Without God ruling people’s lives, there was only chaos.

The words snagged at her heart, bringing to mind her own shortcomings. Her own hidden secret. She needed to check on it—see if it was still safe. Jewel peeked out the door into the hallway. All clear.

Jewel’s bedroom was on the second floor. She tiptoed up another flight of stairs. Though unintelligible, Meral’s voice could be heard, along with Katy Warren’s, drifting up from the kitchen.

Katy was here? The grandmother and matriarch of the Warren clan was a dear friend, and Jewel wanted to go down and greet her, but now that she had a moment alone—something she might not get for a while—she needed to take a good long look at her past.

The one she’d buried, tucked away forever, safe and sound.

Creeping to the end of the hallway, she gently pulled down the stepladder to the attic. She climbed up into the hot and stuffy room. She flicked on a light to add to the sunlight spilling through a dirty dormer window at the far end.

A raccoon had tried to nest up here, and Jewel had come up to chase it away on more than one occasion, but other than that, she hadn’t been up here for months.

Dust motes and cobwebs had taken over the space. Jewel brushed away the webs as she moved. When Silas had bought the B and B, he had believed it would keep her occupied so she wouldn’t worry about him traveling to fight wildfires. They’d hoped to turn the attic into an office or another room for a guest. Instead, it ended up serving as storage for old furniture and collectibles that Jewel planned to use to refresh the B and B decor, switching things out for seasons or special occasions.

And when he’d been away, she’d stored her more valuable collectible—if you could call it that—not just in the house but with the house.

If the house burned to the ground, her valuable would survive.

Jewel headed for the far corner, dreading what she was about to do. Acid churned in her stomach.

She moved a trunk, feeling an ache through her back and across her legs and arms. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. She might accidentally tear the stitches and open up that nasty gash.

Plus, moving the trunk had made too much noise. She had to be quiet, or Katy and Meral would hear her movements.

Creak.

She froze. Her pulse jumped.

The sound had come from the attic. The rafters settling beneath the simple plywood flooring? Or something—someone—else?

At the falls she’d heard the snap of a twig right behind her. Shuddering, she slowly turned to look. See if someone was there, fearing what would happen if they were. She couldn’t see the steps down into the hallway for the boxes and furniture stacked in her way.

Ever since Tracy’s attacker had stayed in the B and B, Jewel had known she needed more protection than the rifles stored in a gun closet or a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol tucked away in her nightstand. She had needed to train in self-defense in case a day ever came when she would have to protect herself without the use of a firearm.

Granted, none of that had come in handy at the falls, except maybe to give her confidence to swim her way to freedom. Would she find herself using that training now? When she heard nothing more, she looked at the wall where the item was hidden behind a plank and reconsidered. Maybe she wasn’t in the right frame of mind to revisit the past.

But there was only one reason Jewel could imagine someone would want her dead. She hadn’t wanted to think about it, but as the walls of the attic closed in around her, she had to face the truth.

Another creak had her stiffening. Preparing for the worst.

“Who’s there?”

How could anyone have come up here with her? She would have heard them, right? “Meral, is that you?”

Her knees shook. She was far weaker than she wanted to be. Too weak to deal with her secret right now. Jewel would come back another day. Maybe when Chief Winters returned from his look at the falls she would tell him everything.

Except he would be disappointed in her, and she didn’t think she could bear that. She made her way through the maze of junk, heading for the steps out of the attic.

The sense of a presence and the rush of wind were all the warning she received. Someone grabbed her from behind, wrapping an arm around her neck.

There was no doubt as to his intention—to choke her to death.

Her pulse skyrocketed. Heart pounded.

But Chief Winters’s words penetrated the fear that gripped her mind and body.

First, don’t panic. Take slow, deep breaths to relax. Then assess what is happening. But do it quickly. A quick reaction can save you.

Breathe. She had to breathe. Hard to do. When. He’s. Choking. Me.

Second, grab his arms. Drop your weight.

She let herself drop, but his grip didn’t waver.

Stomp on his foot.

Jewel jabbed her heel into his foot. Then she tried to move. That was the whole point. Move and slam her fist into his groin. But he kept her pinned tightly.

She couldn’t budge. Her stomp made no noticeable difference. Again. She tried again.

Next she raised her arm, preparing to turn into her attacker and strike him with her elbow. She’d practiced this and had been successful in class demonstrations. But her attacker seemed to expect her every move and squeezed her tighter, holding her in a vice.

Breathe.

She couldn’t breathe.

Darkness edged her vision. Bright pinpoints of light sparked across her eyes.

She struggled and twisted. Had to try something else.

If you can’t get away, try to head butt. Grab his ears, nose, anything to gain an escape.

Jewel threw her head forward and then back against her attacker’s face. His grip loosened enough for Jewel to break free. She pushed forward and away. Took off running as she gasped for oxygen. No time to stop or even scream.

Had to put distance between them. Escape. She had to get away.

She ran for the only exit.

But he slammed into her back. Toppled her. Jewel fell forward, her body slamming hard against the floor. Pain sliced through her, exacerbating her previous injuries. His body weight pressed heavily against her. His breath was hot across her neck.

God, please, no!

Lungs still burning, Jewel screamed, releasing what little air she’d grabbed.

She couldn’t catch her breath, but there were two things she needed to know. “Who are...you? What do you want?”

Voices resounded from below.

Katy and Meral had heard the ruckus.

Jewel tried to scream again to let them know where she was. “Help—”

Boxes toppled, slamming down on her bruised body. Crashing into her head.

Darkness engulfed her.