Читать книгу A Hero's Redemption - Suzanne Mcminn - Страница 10

S he looked scared. Dane didn’t blame her. He was a little scared himself, and that was a little bit of an understatement.

But it was growing more and more impossible for him to ignore what appeared to be the fantastical truth. He’d gone back in time six months, to the week of Calla Jones’s murder. How? Why?

Reality stung him from every direction, and yet how could this be reality? He’d considered, for a few blind, mind-boggling moments, running away. Just…running away. He’d gone outside, in the snow. Half-dressed. Out of his head.

He had to start thinking clearly even while the world around him had rocked completely off its foundation. There was a freaking blizzard out there, and Calla Jones in here. His choices were limited, but heading for certain death in the frozen world gone mad outside this old farmhouse wasn’t the best one. He needed time. Time to make a plan.

In the meantime, he wasn’t sharing his secret with Calla Jones. Or his name. Not until he’d had time to think.

He had no idea what was going on. Yet.

Neither did he have much idea how he was going to figure it out, but it all centered around Calla Jones, didn’t it? That realization shot home suddenly, nearly sucking the breath out of his chest. His life had been destroyed the day he’d come out to her farm. She’d been murdered. He’d been blamed. Now he’d somehow ended up right back here on Calla Jones’s farm, six months earlier, where it all started.

And if whatever Twilight Zone craziness was going on rotated around Calla Jones…His nape prickled and he took a sharp breath, felt the pain. His ribs were bruised, at the very least. He was shaky, and not just from his injuries.

“You…You really don’t know who you are? No idea? Nothing?”

She was staring at him like she wanted to back up, maybe scream. Her hair, auburn-streaked, he realized now in the pale light framing her, not mere brown, was tousled—she’d been sleeping on the couch when he’d left the farmhouse. She’d slept in her clothes, he guessed. She wouldn’t have had time to change before she’d come tearing out after him.

The beat stretched between them. The gurgle of the coffeemaker and wind creaking against the farmhouse filled the space.

He avoided a direct response. “I was in an accident,” he said, remembering now that he’d told her that last night. “I don’t know what happened.” That much was true.

“I didn’t see anything out there. I didn’t see a car or anything.”

“Maybe the accident didn’t happen on the road outside your farm. Maybe I was trying to walk back to town.” Really, he didn’t know whether that was true or not. For all he remembered, it could be.

“You need to be looked at by a doctor. I can’t get you to town, and I can’t call for help. The phone’s dead in the farmhouse, and cell phones don’t work out here. Even if I could call, I doubt anyone could get up here right now. The roads are impassable when we have this kind of storm.”

Now she did back up, as if it was hitting her, again, that she was stuck with this stranger. She had to have realized that before, and yet she’d saved him last night and had rushed out again this morning after him. She was “good people,” this Calla Jones he’d been convicted of murdering. Of course, he’d known that. He’d heard her friends extol her virtues at the sentencing hearing.

“I can try to walk back to town,” he said. He didn’t want to leave, not now, not yet. He’d been thrown back in time, back to the very scene of the crime, for a reason. There had to be a reason. Nothing made sense, but that was why he had to stay.

He had to make sense of it. As much as he’d been ready to, crazily, run away in the storm moments before, now he knew he had to stay. Calla Jones was the key.

But Calla Jones was scared. He had to gamble that, bighearted person that she was, she wasn’t going to think his tromping off in the storm was a good idea.

“No, you can’t do that,” she said finally. “It’s snowing, and it’s supposed to snow harder later. It’s miles into town. You’re already suffering from exposure. You’d never make it.”

She chewed her lip, watched him worriedly from wary eyes. “I couldn’t find any identification on you,” she went on. “I did find a receipt from a dry cleaner’s in town.”

The suit he’d worn at the sentencing, right before he’d been loaded into the transport van, had been cleaned in Haven for his court appearance. The high-priced attorney that Carter Sloane, the Ledger CEO, had hired had taken care of it. Unfortunately Edward Jeffries hadn’t taken care of much else he’d needed. Like getting him off.

She watched him with those deep brown eyes of hers, eyes flecked with amber lights, scared but concerned. They were gentle and sweet eyes.

She didn’t deserve to die, not any more than he deserved to go to prison for the rest of his life. His head reeled again. It was a tall order he was setting himself up to fill, saving the both of them. And he was still in shock and having a hard time accepting this strange new reality.

He propped his elbow on the table and leaned his head into his palm, a wash of disorientation hitting him.

“Are you okay? Are you going to be sick?”

She was there, kneeling at his feet. He lifted his gaze, found hers tight on his.

He swallowed hard over the lump of dread in his throat. “I’m all right.” He had to be all right. “I just feel like I’ve been beaten up by fifty guys, that’s all.”

“My name’s Calla, in case you don’t remember,” she said. “This is Haven Christmas Tree Farm. Haven, West Virginia. It’s December 20.”

She’d been murdered on December 22. Whatever quirk of fate had given him this second chance, it hadn’t been generous with time. He had two days…

And then would it happen all over again?

Calla Jones would die and he would end up in jail? He’d come out to her farm that day, from his office in Parkersburg where Ledger Pharmaceuticals was headquartered. He’d come on routine business—an audit had uncovered a legal form misplaced from her employee records. She hadn’t even worked for Ledger for some time. She’d been in the research department, but he wasn’t aware of much more than that, nor had he been much interested. He’d arrived at the farm and next thing he’d known, he’d been knocked out. He’d woken to the nightmare of her dead body and the rest was documented in court records.

Her hand rested on his knee. She was so damn nice and pretty to boot. Why would anyone want to kill her?

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I don’t know what I can do to help you, but you’re welcome to stay here, ride out the storm.”

“Thank you. You’re very kind.” Very kind, and perhaps too innocent. Someone had come to her farm that day and killed her, possibly they’d been lying in wait when he’d arrived, taken advantage of the opportunity to set someone else up for the crime. Not that his lawyer had had much luck with any of the conspiracy theories he’d floated. The jury had bought the prosecutor’s premise that he’d had some kind of relationship with her at Ledger, putting it all down to a crime of passion despite evidence that he’d come to Haven for a specific business purpose.

There’d been absolutely no proof that he’d had any kind of affair with Calla Jones at all, no witnesses, but the district attorney had theorized that since relationships between coworkers were frowned on at Ledger, they’d kept it secret. Motive had hardly mattered, not when there was a dead body and his fingerprints all over the murder weapon. He was an outsider in a small and clannish town, accused of killing one of their own, caught seemingly red-handed. The jury had been quick enough to believe what was in front of them, evidence of motive be damned.

He’d never had a chance.

“There’s not much point being anything other than kind,” Calla Jones said now. Calla Jones, alive and well and two days from death. She removed her hand from his knee, straightened.

Oddly, he missed her touch, unfamiliar as it was. He hadn’t been touched with such gentleness in six months. He’d barely felt human touch at all, other than prison guards shackling and unshackling him, guiding him from place to place. The judge hadn’t set a bond. He’d spent six months in the county lockup waiting for trial. The murder had been too shocking. The town had been up in arms. Bail had been a hopeless dream.

“The coffee’s ready,” she added, and he could hear the nervous thread in her voice.

She was kind, but maybe she wasn’t as naive as he’d been thinking. She was scared of him, still. He’d have to break through her wariness. He needed to get to know her, to get to know why someone would want her dead. If it had been a crime of passion, as the “overkilling” suggested, who was passionate about Calla Jones? Passionate enough to shoot her not once but five times?

A minute later, she had a steaming cup of coffee in front of him.

“Sugar? Cream?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Black’s fine.”

She didn’t get herself a cup and sit down with him. Instead she headed toward the back of the house again, coming back with an armful of what looked like empty plastic milk jugs. He watched, sipping the coffee that injected sorely needed heat to his veins.

“Can I help?” He had no idea what she was doing, but he wasn’t going to sit here and let her do all the work.

And he needed to get her talking. Somehow. She was nervous around him and he needed to make her more comfortable.

His brain was starting to work. Now he just had to control the slight blast of nearly uncontainable excitement that hit him. He had a second chance. If this was real, if he really had gone six months back in time, he had a second chance.

And everything around him, including Calla Jones, seemed very real. If this was a dream, he didn’t want to wake up now.

She placed one of the jugs in the deep sink, ignoring his offer to help. “The generator’s not dependable and this storm’s predicted to go through the night, at least. We’re on well water here, and the well needs power to run.” She turned on the faucet, started filling the container. “The generator could go bad and we’ll have no power. Or the pipes could freeze. Either way, we’ll have no water.”

Dane downed the last of the coffee and rose. “Then we’ll have no heat, either. And if this is all the firewood you’ve got in the house—”

She flipped around. “There’s more stacked in the utility room, but you’re right. It’s not enough.”

“Where’s more?”

“Out behind the barn. Under a tarp. Should be pretty dry. I hope. You’re not going out there.”

“Someone has to. If the snow’s going to pick up later, now’s the time.”

Frustration etched her face. Her eyes sparked, making her even prettier. “I’m trying to get you warmed up. Going out in the cold again is not a good idea.”

“Someone has to,” he repeated. “I can always warm up again.”

She took a step toward him as if she might physically stop him.

“I said no.” She stamped her foot.

She actually stamped her foot. He guessed she wasn’t even aware of doing it.

A sudden, unexpected and truly unwanted vision of various ways Calla Jones could warm him up invaded his head. A hot trail of surprising and not-experienced-for-over-six-months sexual desire nipped at his loins.

“That was really cute,” he blurted out.

“What was cute?” She looked even more irritated.

“You, stamping your foot.”

“I did not stamp my foot!”

“There, you did it again!”

“I did not. Okay, maybe I did.” She blushed now, and that wasn’t just cute, it was sexy as hell. She swiped at her hair, brushing it out of her face. “But whatever. You’re not going outside.”

“And you’re not doing all the work here,” he countered, working on grounding himself, keeping it sane. What was he doing anyway? Flirting with her? Really, his head must still be reeling.

He couldn’t even pretend to himself that this was all part of his big plan to get close to her and figure out who might want to kill her. He’d just flat-out been enjoying himself for a second, and maybe he was feeling a little heady from the sensation of having a second chance here, but that was no excuse, either.

They were in deep trouble, both of them. Trouble Calla knew and understood, and trouble she didn’t. Trouble even he didn’t understand.

Dane stood, swaying slightly, but he was all right. Or he would be. He certainly wasn’t going to get his strength back sitting on his ass drinking coffee while she did everything.

“You’re so weak you can hardly stand up,” she started.

“I’m fine,” he promised, steadying himself. He was shaky, but he’d make it. “I want to help. And since I’m bound and determined to do it and you can’t stop me, you might as well keep filling up on water. I’ll put on that jacket out there. If you’ve got gloves and a hat, I’ll take that, too.”

“You could lose your way. I’ll go with you.”

“The generator could die anytime. You said that. We need the water, too. How long do you think it could be before the road is cleared and electricity is back on if this storm keeps up as predicted throughout the rest of today and tonight?”

“Later in the day tomorrow if we’re lucky. Maybe not till the day after. Depending on what else goes wrong along with the storm. One time when I was a kid, I was spending Christmas here with my grandfather and the storm lasted a week. There were power lines down everywhere and trees across the roads.”

Her gaze drifted to the kitchen window where snow continued to swirl the air, harder already. She chewed her lip.

“Then it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? There’s no time to waste. We need water, and we need wood. If this gets worse, soon we won’t even be able to see our way out to the barn and I can haul more wood in one trip than you can. Meanwhile, you can get the water. Divide and conquer, right?”

Dane didn’t wait for her answer, a fierce need to protect Calla driving him. Maybe too fierce to be explainable, even by the circumstances. He didn’t want to think about what was behind the strength of that feeling.