Wyoming Tough - Diana Palmer [73]
“My father called the detective,” she said matter-of-factly. “I was blamed for the theft of the egg in the first place.”
“You were?” he exclaimed.
She nodded. “By Gelly. And Bates, the cowboy who planted it in my bag.”
“I hate that,” he said slowly. “I never meant to hurt you. You been kind to me. Most people don’t care.”
“I’m sorry for you, I really am,” she told him. “But killing Mallory won’t solve any problems. It will just guarantee you the death penalty.”
He laughed again, a cold, chilling sound, and his eyes were opaque. “I won’t go back. I killed that man deliberately,” he said, his eyes suddenly as cold as his voice. “He wouldn’t tell me where the money was. I was going to have money to take Gelly places and buy her nice things. She said she loved me more than anybody in the world. Nobody loved me since my wife died….”
Her heart stilled in her chest. She’d never known that Joe was involved with the woman. She would have bet that the Kirks didn’t know, either.
“Did you know that she had a record?” she asked. “She was arrested twice and charged with theft, but she managed to get out of going to trial. She won’t be that lucky this time.”
“She said she had another way to get money, since this one fell through,” he muttered. “She was going to claim that Mallory got her pregnant.” He shook his head, while Morie stood frozen in place. “But after I kidnapped him, he told me he taped the conversation she had with him when she said it would be a lie but she could make people believe her. Can you believe she’d be that stupid?!”
Morie relaxed. She’d worried for a second that it could be true. It was such a relief! But she still had to save Mallory….
“I brought you something else,” she said, and indicated the leather pouch.
He frowned. He put down the thermos cup and opened the pouch. He caught his breath. “This is a fortune!”
“Not really. It’s just five thousand. It’s part of my inheritance. My father owns a big cattle ranch in Texas. His mother left me the money.” She moved closer. “It will help you get away, won’t it? So will you let Mallory go?”
His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “The bills are marked, huh?”
She threw up her hands. “How do you mark bills?” she exclaimed, exasperated. “I came straight from the bank to the airport, and I told no body what I was going to do with the money. I didn’t even tell my folks that I took it out of my account!”
He relaxed then. He took the money in his hands and looked at it with pure fascination. He’d done so many things, tried so hard, to get enough to get out of this county alive. Now he had the means. All he had to do was leave, now….
“Were you followed?” he asked her at once.
She shook her head. “I made them promise.”
He was thinking, planning, plotting. The money would buy him a cheap car, and clothes and food. He could run to Montana, where he had other friends who would hide him. He could get away.
He turned back to her and picked up the shotgun. For an instant, her heart shivered as she wondered if he’d kill her now that she’d given him the cash.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said in an awkward way. “I just want to get away. I can’t go back to jail. I can’t be locked up.” He stared at the money. “I hit my mother with a tire iron,” he recalled in a faraway, shocked tone. “I never meant to hurt her. I never meant to hurt anybody. I get these rages. I go blind mad and I can’t control it. I can’t help myself.” He closed his eyes. “Maybe I’d be better off dead, you know? I wouldn’t hurt anybody