Silver Falls - Anne Stuart [104]
“You love me, Rachel,” he shouted at her over the roar of the water. “You always have. Let go and come with me.”
She stared down at him for a long, raging moment. “Fuck…you,” she screamed, and slammed her heavy booted foot into his face. Once, twice.
With the third kick his fingers let go, and he fell, silently, spinning with the gracefulness of a diver until he disappeared into the roaring falls.
Caleb pulled her up, hoisting her onto the muddy ground, and she pushed away from him, scrambling across the dirt, breathless, until she was able to reach Sophie and pull her into her arms, sobbing. In the distance she could hear the sirens, and the flames from the burning building climbed high into the rainy sky. She buried her face in Sophie’s hair and closed her eyes, letting go for the first time in days.
They were safe.
David was dead.
It was going to be all right.
22
Rachel parked her battered Volvo on the road, not in the driveway, and slowly walked up the path to the front door of the house she’d once shared with David. The apple tree in the yard had started to die, the deep ruts from her car still scarred the grass.
She hadn’t been back in the two weeks since David’s death. She couldn’t bear to. They’d kept them in the hospital for a couple of days—she had cuts and scrapes on her arms that she’d never noticed, from jumping through broken windows, and Sophie still had the effects of David’s drugs in her system.
They also wanted to do a psych evaluation. Of course Sophie passed with flying colors. She’d never had any illusions about David. She wasn’t the one who’d put her own child in danger because she was so blindly certain she was doing the right thing.
But in the end they were both released, and after ten days at the local hotel they were finally free to leave Silver Falls. Which Rachel had every intention of doing.
Stephen Henry was still in the hospital. The bullet had lodged near his heart, and he was an old man. A healthy old man and a liar, and still enough of a force in town that he probably wouldn’t even be charged with obstructing justice. Rachel didn’t care one way or the other. He’d been as blind as she’d been, in his own way. And he’d done his best to make up for it.
The one strange thing was Sophie’s sudden affection for the Old Goat. She visited him almost every day, and they’d developed a sort of bantering rudeness that they both enjoyed tremendously, particularly once it became clear that Stephen Henry’s lechery was more particularly directed toward the young male nurses than her prepubescent daughter.
Of Caleb there’d been no sign at all. At least, not for her. She had no idea where he was staying. He wasn’t at the one hotel, and his own place had burned to the ground. She suspected he might be holed up at Stephen Henry’s while the old man was in the hospital, but she didn’t care enough to ask, she told herself. Since he didn’t care enough to show his face.
Maggie was waiting for her outside the house, her broad, expressionless face the same as always. “You’re really going to leave us?” she said when Rachel climbed out of the car.
“Could you even doubt it? You and Kristen can come visit with us whenever we’re back in the country. Kristen could even fly overseas and join us during school vacations.”
“You’re forgetting how much a small-town cop makes.”
“You’re forgetting how much David’s insurance settlement was,” she replied. “I don’t really want the money, but I’m more than delighted to use it for things that will make Sophie happy. She’s come through this amazingly well but she’ll still need her friends.”
“Seems like she’s come through it better than you,” Maggie observed.
Rachel made a face. “Thanks for noticing. Sophie doesn’t have to kick herself in the butt every day for being a gullible fool. I don’t just marry a psychopath, but I nearly get us murdered because I refused to listen to