Читать книгу Return To Falcon Ridge - Rita Herron - Страница 12

Elsie stood, willing Deke Falcon to leave her in peace. Not to open doors to the past that held pain so intense she’d once thought she’d die from it.

But instead of moving, his black eyes pierced through her as if he could see all the way inside her soul. “Who told you that your mother was dead?” he asked in a low voice.

She clutched the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “My father. Now, I asked you to leave, Mr. Falcon.”

“It’s Deke, Elsie.” He tried to reach for her but she backed away. “And your mother is not dead. She’s very much alive and she wants to see you. She still lives in your old house in Tin City.”

A bitter laugh escaped her. “Now I know you’re lying. My mother sent me away years ago, back when my friend Hailey died.”

A long tense second followed. “Hailey is alive, too.” His voice dropped a decibel, almost apologetic as if he thought she’d already known. “Everyone thought she was dead, but she came back to Tin City a few months ago.”

“What are you talking about?” Elsie whispered. The memory of the night Hailey had disappeared hung like a dark cloud, still vivid in her mind. In spite of the fact that her mother had warned her to stay away from the Lyles, she had crawled into the attic to visit Hailey earlier that day. But she’d left when Hailey’s daddy had come home. Hailey’s father had been cruel and abusive, and the two girls had both been terrified of him. Elsie had felt guilty that she’d abandoned her friend.

“Hailey and her family were killed that night,” she said. “By the caretaker who lived next door. His name was…” She hesitated, then suddenly the name shot into her head. “Falcon…. Mr. Falcon….”

Harsh lines slashed his jaw as he scowled with anger. “Yes, Randolph Falcon, he was my father.”

Dear God, Deke Falcon’s father was the hatchet killer.

Fear bolted through her. Why had he come to her now?

She took a step backward, but her foot hit the hearth, and she nearly tripped. He grabbed her arms, but she wrenched away. “Please don’t hurt me. Just leave,” she pleaded.

“I told you, I’m not here to hurt you, just like my father didn’t hurt anyone,” he said between clenched teeth. “Your mother sent me to search for you. She wants to see you. The night Hailey’s parents were killed, your father took you away. Your mother has been looking for you ever since.”

Elsie staggered, unable to accept his declaration as true.

“It’s a long story, Elsie, and I’m not leaving here until you hear me out.”

She swallowed hard, trying to remember Deke from childhood. There had been three Falcon boys, all older than her, all mean as snakes. Their father raised falcons, and the school kids claimed the boys were strange, that they communed with wild animals.

Deke removed an envelope from his shirt pocket and pushed it toward her. “Look at these. They’re pictures of Hailey’s wedding. She married my brother, Rex. Your mother attended the ceremony.”

“Now I know you’re fabricating this story. If Hailey returned, she’d never marry the son of her family’s killer.”

Deke closed his eyes as if she had stabbed a knife in his chest. When he opened them again, pain had settled in the dark brown depths. “My father didn’t kill Hailey’s family. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Rex, Brack and I run a P.I. firm. Last year, we reopened my father’s case and when Hailey returned, they discovered that she’d repressed memories of the murder.”

“It turns out that Hailey’s father had a twin brother. He came to help Hailey, her mother and brother escape the abuse, but Hailey’s father showed up and killed the mother and son. Hailey ran into the woods. Everyone thought she had died, but she climbed into a small boat and a trucker found her later. She had lost her memory and wound up in foster care. When Hailey came back to Tin City, her father, who’d been hiding all these years, tried to kill her. My brother saved her.”

Hailey’s sweet face flashed into Elsie’s mind, and tears filled her eyes. “Oh, my God. You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Elsie. My father was cleared. Hailey and Rex married.” His solemn eyes spoke the truth.

Elsie’s head was spinning. Hailey was alive. Mr. Falcon hadn’t killed Hailey’s father.

If that were true, maybe Deke was telling her the truth about her mother.

“Look at the pictures, Elsie. The proof is there. Hailey and your mother are both alive, and they want very much to see you.”

Elsie stumbled backward and collapsed on the hearth, letting the heat from the fire warm her back as she opened the envelope. Inside, several photos fell into her lap. In the first one, she was small, about four or five years old, with a missing front tooth and a big smile. A memory crashed back, the day her mother had taken the photo. They’d gone shopping and had ice-cream sodas at the soda shop in town. Then her mother had bought her a charm bracelet. What had happened to it?

She jerked her head toward Deke. “Where did you get this?”

“Your mother gave it to me. She kept it all these years.” He hesitated, his voice gruff. “That’s the way she remembers you, Elsie, as the little girl she loved.”

A low sob caught in Elsie’s throat. “I…can’t believe this is happening, that all this time…”

Deke gestured toward the other photos. Two tall muscular men who resembled Deke flanked a gorgeous woman. “That’s Hailey now,” Deke said. “And my brothers, Rex and Brack, on Rex’s wedding day. Hailey planned to remodel her old house into an antique shop, but it burned down. They’re living at Falcon Ridge now, while they build a new house on her old property.”

Elsie’s mind raced to assimilate the information. Her best friend from years ago was really alive. She had survived her awful childhood. And now she looked so happy. Tears trickled down her cheeks, and she swiped them away, hating to reveal her emotions in front of Deke Falcon. He seemed so angry.

She thumbed through two more pictures of the wedding, until her gaze fell on a group shot. An older woman with graying hair and the warmest smile Elsie had ever seen stood in the center.

“That’s your mother, Deanna,” Deke said in a gruff voice.

Elsie pressed her hand to her mouth to stifle a cry. She’d recognized her immediately. “She’s…so beautiful.” Elsie’s heart stammered. Although she was smiling, the woman’s eyes held an emptiness, as well, as if she had experienced deep sadness in her life. The kind of loss that Elsie had felt in her own heart since her father had taken her away.

Could it possibly be true? Had her mother really wanted her?

Memories bombarded her. Memories she had stored away in the most distant corners of her mind because they had been so painful. She and her mother weaving pot holders out of yarn. The two of them baking a cake for her birthday. Her mother singing lullabies to her and tucking her into bed.

Her mother had loved her. Elsie had felt it back then.

A woman like that wouldn’t just turn her back on her child. Her gaze met Deke’s, and she saw the truth in his eyes. But her smile faded as bitter reality surfaced. Her father had lied to her all these years. He’d convinced her that she was responsible for the plague of death on Hailey’s family. That her mother hated her. And later when she’d grown up and had questioned him about her mother, he’d claimed her mother was dead.

Then Elsie had been even more lost. Even more confused and angry. And she’d gotten in trouble.

So much trouble that she’d blamed herself when her father had abandoned her to the horrors of Wildcat Manor.

DEKE HAD ALWAYS BEEN a sucker for a damsel in distress. And Elsie Timmons fit that picture perfectly. Instead of happy or excited, she appeared to be tormented by his news.

Of course, he understood her mixed reaction. He had been thrilled that his father was released, but the bitterness he felt from all the time he’d lost with him, for all the pain his family had endured, especially his mother, had lingered.

Elsie had obviously struggled. If her claims were true, her father had lied to her all her life. Where was he now?

She studied the pictures over and over again, then glanced back into the fire, dazed. Her eyes looked haunted, grief and sadness so embedded in the depths, that his gut clenched. She reminded him of the injured animals he and his brothers found in the wild. A butterfly maybe, or a wounded kitten.

“Your mother wants me to bring you back to see her,” he finally said.

Her gaze flew to his, questions and worry flashing.

“I’ll be glad to escort you.”

“No…I can’t go.”

His anger rose, defenses born from a lifetime of being looked at as a killer’s son surfacing. Was she still afraid of him?

“You can call her yourself.” Furious at himself for wanting to soothe her pain when she looked at him as a villain, he reached inside his wallet, removed his business card, then scribbled her mother’s name and number on it. “This is my P.I. firm, if you want to check it out, and there’s your mother’s number.”

Her chin quivered as she accepted the card. “She really wanted me all these years?”

The anguish in her voice overrode his anger, and he sat down beside her and gently touched her hand. A frisson of sexual awareness bolted through him, the sight of her eyes filled with tears nearly ripping him inside out. “Yes, Elsie. Call her. She’ll be thrilled to hear from you.”

She clamped her teeth over her trembling lip. “I…can’t right now. I need time, time to think, to take all this in.”

He stroked her hand with his fingers, aching to pull her into his arms. A possessive, foreign feeling he didn’t understand filled him. “Where is your father, Elsie?”

Fear and something else—shame? anger?—settled across her face. “I don’t know. I haven’t heard from him in years.”

“What happened after he took you from your mother?”

She glanced down at her hands, at his fingers as they moved slowly over hers, but she didn’t pull away. “We moved around a lot. Every town he took me to, we used another name.”

“Your mother hired another P.I. back then,” he said. “But your father managed to stay hidden.”

“He didn’t…couldn’t keep a job,” she said. “He blamed her for their failed marriage, for me.”

“What do you mean?”

She couldn’t explain the painful things he’d said to her. “I…I don’t think he wanted a child.”

“But he stole you from her,” Deke said in a low voice.

“To hurt her,” she said, raw pain tingeing her voice.

He muttered a curse, and she averted her gaze, rocking herself back and forth. “When was the last time you saw him?” Deke asked.

The shaking that had finally stopped racking her slender frame assaulted her again, and he ground his teeth to keep from putting his arms around her. He had to move slowly with Elsie, be gentle, approach her as he would a wounded hawk.

“When I was fourteen.”

He frowned. “What happened?”

She shook her heard, hunching her shoulders. “I…don’t want to talk about it.”

He gestured around the monstrous room. “He left you here at this orphanage, didn’t he?”

A slight nod of her head served as her reply. Then she stood and turned toward the fire, seemingly lost in the flames.

“I will take you back to your home,” he said. “When you see your mother, everything will be all right. Trust me, you’ll see.”

Elsie shook her head, tears spiking her long black lashes. “It’s too late,” she said in a haunted whisper. “I can’t go back now, Deke. Not ever.”

Raw anguish knifed through Elsie. In mere seconds, she’d memorized her mother’s features. Her smile. Her sad eyes. The changes in her face. The slight graying of her hair.

And with that, the memory of her voice had returned. The sound of her soft singing. Her spontaneous laughter. The smell of the gardenia lotion she used on her hands. The look of joy on her face when Elsie had drawn a picture for her or when she’d done something to please her mother.

“I’m so proud of you,” her mother would say. “You’re my little angel.”

But in the fire, Elsie saw Howard Hodges, his skin burning, his eyes screaming in pain, the flames eating his hair.

If her mother knew what Elsie had done, how she’d survived, the fact that she had murdered a man, she couldn’t smile or be proud of her. And she would never call her an angel.

Shame would fill her eyes. Disappointment. Maybe fury.

She would send Elsie away for sure this time. Elsie wouldn’t blame her.

She wasn’t the innocent, sweet little girl she had been when she’d lived at home or when she’d played hopscotch and baby dolls with Hailey. But heaven help her, she wanted to go home. Wanted to feel her mother’s arms around her.

She angled her face and saw Deke studying her. She had been afraid of him when she’d first met him. Yet in the last few minutes, he had shown her a tenderness she’d never known existed. A tenderness between a man and a woman.

He had made her want to fall into his arms and let him hold her. Yet his raw masculinity frightened her at the same time. How did she know if she could trust him?

He was only here doing a job. And it was sympathy in his eyes, not real emotion or caring. Or even attraction.

No, if she confided about her past, he would never want to be seen with her. He might even turn her over to the police.

He placed his hand on her arm, turned her to face him. “Elsie, talk to me. Tell me what’s going through your head. I swear, I’ll help you.”

She pulled away, immediately missing the warmth of his touch. But she couldn’t share her horrid secrets with anyone.

“I need some time to think.”

“To think about what?” His voice sounded gruff, slightly agitated. “Deanna has called me almost every day the last two weeks to see if I’ve found you. She’ll want to know what you look like, when I’m bringing you back.” His dark brows furrowed. “I hate to lie to her. She’s a sweet lady, and she’s suffered for a long time.”

Guilt weighed on Elsie’s shoulders. She almost wavered. Deke Falcon had no idea how much she wanted to see her mother. But she couldn’t return until she made something of herself. Until she faced her past and rectified her sins by building this center for kids. If she didn’t, she would always look at herself as an evil person.

And as a murderer.