Wyoming Christmas Ransom. Nicole Helm

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      “We follow the clues and—”

      “Then what after that? You find the guy your wife was cheating with? You question him and maybe he even had something to do with it despite all evidence to the contrary. The searching is over, you have your answers, your justice. What then?” Because she’d been foolishly hoping to help him to that what then, but she had a terrible feeling she’d spent the past two years only aiding him in becoming more screwed up, more of a hermit and less of the easy-going Will Cooper she’d known peripherally before Paula’s death.

      And because she cared about him, but had zero actual responsibility or hold on him, she had to walk away.

      “We’ll have the truth,” Will said, as if she was the one living in a fantasy world. “I’ve been searching for the truth for two years. I don’t know why you’re giving up, but I can’t. I can’t ignore two years’ worth of something telling me this is all wrong.”

      “What will you do with whatever truth you’re after?”

      He looked at her a bit like she’d struck him. “Hopefully put a murderer in jail.” He shook his head. “Why? Why are you doing this? After all this time, you’re just abandoning me. I don’t get it.”

      He actually sounded and looked hurt, instead of just irritated he didn’t have help anymore, so she gave him the truth. “I care about you, Will, and I can’t keep watching you get worse.”

      * * *

      WILL COULDN’T PROCESS those words, or the soft look in Gracie’s brown eyes. Care. Such a weird word. Such a dangerous thing, to care about someone. You couldn’t control what they’d do with that. Couldn’t predict it. You could feel safe and happy one minute, eviscerated and broken the next.

      Care. No. It gave him a full-body chill. “Get worse at what?” he asked, working to pretend the first part of that sentence didn’t exist.

      She blew out a breath, lights from the tacky Christmas decorations all around creating a sort of warm yellow glow around her. Occasionally, the few nights he managed to sleep well enough to dream, he’d dream of her, much like this. Something like an angel, down to the glowing.

      He wasn’t fanciful enough to believe in things like angels, but he wasn’t so cynical he couldn’t believe that Gracie was part of his life for a reason.

      So why was she leaving it?

      She blew out a breath. “You said you don’t need a friend, but I’m always here if you decide you do. But I’m done playing detective. It was an accident, Will. An accident.”

      “She was not cheating on me accidentally.”

      “No.”

      “What changed? Something did, because a person doesn’t just walk away after...” It all lodged a little too hard, the words he was saying, a very painful realization he’d come here for the very, very stupid reason of feeling abandoned, and that overly sympathetic look on her face.

      He tried to say he had to leave, but he wasn’t sure any words actually came out of his mouth. He was moving too fast away from her and this town and...

      This was why he stayed up there. When he came down to town, when people were around, talking about things not related to Paula’s death, all these messy, confusing, complicated and mixed-up emotions boiled up and over. Who wanted to live in the center of all those things? He didn’t understand these people walking through life like it wasn’t a relentless parade of suck.

      He didn’t need Gracie to be his friend. He didn’t need anyone to be his friend. He most certainly didn’t need fake Christmas crap surrounding him to the point of suffocation.

      Who cared if Gracie had a reason for backing out? It wasn’t the same as learning your wife was cheating on you, or that she was dead. None of this was the same.

      But somewhere in the past few years he’d lost how to parse it all. Which meant he’d let this all go—Gracie, her help, anything to do with Bent. He’d figure this all out on his own where he was safe from the way people were complicated, from the way people could betray you.

      “Will. Wait.”

      But he couldn’t wait. He had to get back to his house, his mountain. Far away from all this.

      He turned away from her, hunching against the cold. There were cars everywhere, filling the lot, clogging both sides of the street. He’d had to park two blocks down.

      Before turning the corner to where his Jeep was parked, he gave a final glimpse at Gracie standing there in the twinkling lights, hugging herself and looking worried and like a Christmas gift.

      He damn well didn’t need her worry. Or care.

      He climbed into his Jeep and started the engine. He drove out of Bent, so distracted with the roiling set of emotions inside him it took miles to realize something wasn’t right.

      The engine was making a horrible noise, and the steering wheel wasn’t responding the way it normally did. Will frowned. It was pitch-black on this mountain road and not a good place to stop. Even though traffic wasn’t a big concern, 18-wheelers sometimes rumbled by toward Fairmont.

      If he stopped—

      The thought, the hope he could fix this situation, died in an instant. When his foot tapped the brake, nothing happened. He swallowed at the trickle of fear, pressing his foot down harder. A grinding noise sounded—a terrible one—and the brake barely responded, slowing his progress only a little bit.

      Will swore as he continued to stomp his foot on the brake. Horrible noise, a slight decrease in speed, but not enough. Keeping his eyes on the road and one hand gripped to the steering wheel for dear life, he fished his phone out from the messy console.

      He waited for a straightaway on the road, searched for anything that might slow his car down without killing him. All there was in the dark night, he knew, were rocks and trees and death. He couldn’t even see the moon, like some kind of terrible omen.

      He dialed Gracie’s number, impatiently swearing as it rang over and over again. He remembered the emergency brake, stomped on the lever, but nothing happened.

      She didn’t answer.

      Stupid to call her instead of 911, and still he gripped his phone with one hand, while desperately trying to take the curves of the dark road ahead of him. Screeching tires, increasing speed as the road dipped, entire car shuddering.

      “Gracie,” he shouted into his phone when her voice mail beep sounded. “I need your help.”

      But he couldn’t explain beyond that because he had to drop the phone to grip the steering wheel with both hands. Except that didn’t seem to help. His steering had gone the way of the brakes and now he was careening toward another curve, this time with no hope of doing anything but catapulting over the edge and into a grove of trees.

       Paula’s trees.

       Chapter Three

      Gracie СКАЧАТЬ