Dead Even - Mariah Stewart [118]
“Jesus, Cahill,” he groaned, “you’re killing me.”
“Maybe so, but at least you’ll die with a smile on your face. . . .”
He could feel her smile through the dark, and he laughed, then sat up and grabbed her around the waist, pulling her onto the floor next to him.
“Pillow,” she muttered.
He reached for the one she’d been using and slid it under her head, then pulled her closer.
“Is the floor too hard for your back?” he asked.
“It’s okay.” She snuggled into him.
For a moment, he just enjoyed the sensation of having her this close again.
“Stay,” she whispered. “Stay this time.”
“This time and every time,” he told her.
She was reaching her arms up to draw him close when his phone began to ring.
“Don’t answer it,” she protested. “Any time the phone rings at two o’clock in the morning, it’s not going to be good news.”
“It’s three,” he said as he rolled onto one side to retrieve his phone from his pocket and checked the incoming call. “It’s John.”
“Even worse,” she groaned.
“Hey, John,” Will said. “Yeah, you heard right . . . yeah, here’s what happened. . . .”
Will proceeded to walk John through the night’s events. When he finished the call a long twelve minutes later, he turned off the phone and tossed it onto the sofa.
“We have to be in the office tomorrow for a meeting around four to wrap this Douglas thing up, then we’ll be briefed on the Prescott case. John wants us to fly out to Wyoming day after tomorrow and help track down the girls who have gone missing from the compound over the past few years. Looks like there have been dozens of them, John thinks maybe even hundreds. Genna’s going to be lead on this; we’re going to be working with her.”
He lay beside Miranda, stroking her hair lightly with his fingers. “Looks like those pretty silk scarves are going to have to wait, babe. But maybe we can leave for Wyoming ahead of the others so that we can have a little time to ourselves. Won’t be the Fleming Inn, but I’m sure we’ll find someplace nice. What do you think? Miranda?”
He glanced down and realized that she was sound asleep.
“Well, that’s okay,” he whispered. “God knows you earned it.”
Will lay awake in the still house, the only sound Miranda’s gentle breathing, thinking that of all the nights they’d spent together over the past few years, he’d never felt closer to her than he did right at that moment.
He thought about where they’d been and where they were headed, about the things that had gone wrong between them in the past, and he promised himself that the road ahead would be different from the road they were leaving behind. He whispered that promise to her in the dark, then closed his eyes and joined her in sleep.
EPILOGUE
Vince was in the infirmary, waiting for his turn to see the nurse about an annoying rash he had developed over much of his body.
“Gotta be the lousy crap they wash our clothes with,” he’d grumbled to the guard who’d brought him up.
The door to the nurse’s office stood open, and Vince could see straight inside to the TV where the noon news was just coming on. He amused himself for a few minutes, listening to the political bullshit that passed for commentary on the elections that would be held in several days. When the anchor moved back to local headlines, Vince almost fell off his chair.
“. . . body of suspected killer Archer Lowell was found down the road from the farm where true-crime writer Joshua Landry had been killed just days earlier. In an exclusive interview with the local chief of police, this station has learned that the bullets that killed both men were fired from the same gun. In an even more bizarre twist, that gun was found on the body of Burton Connolly, an ex-con who was shot and killed outside a house in Lyndon where the chief financial officer for Reverend Prescott was arrested two nights ago. . . .”
What the fuck . . . ?
Vince leaned as close to the open door as he could get when the tape of the arrest in Lyndon began to roll.
Wow, he thought as he watched the tape. Archer’s dead. Burt-man, too. What the fuck was going on?
And hey, there