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  “But you were in too deep by then, weren’t you?” Donna asked.

  Hell, yes. His own wife had wanted a baby so badly. All the miscarriages. The fertility treatments. The disappointments. At last he’d seen his chance for a child. And then Eleanor…

  After that, helping the girls had come naturally. He was a doctor. He wanted to treat them in return for the gift he’d been given. But then the lies trapped him. If he’d quit the orphanage, Hodges would have ruined him. And if he hadn’t worked with him, Hodges would have found someone else, someone not as qualified, someone who might not have cared about the girls’ health care or the infants. Then what would have happened to the

  It had been a no-win situation. When Elsie Timmons had started that fire…

  She had been a godsend that had ended it all.

  Yet now she was back again. Guilt weighed on him. He should tell her the truth.

  But he didn’t have the courage.

  “I see the wheels turning in your head now,” Eleanor said. “I know you’ll crack if they push you.”

  He denied her accusation, although he’d never had a good poker face. He was old and tired and the lies had eaten away at his soul. He laid the folder down, stared at it and wanted to do the right thing. But the right thing for one person would hurt another.

  Eleanor slowly walked toward him, her hand shaking. “Shred it,” she ordered.

  He didn’t move. He simply stared at her, some part of his inner being snapping from the guilt. “Put the gun down, sis. If you kill me, you’ll go to prison and then you’ll lose your children forever.”

  Eleanor lifted the weapon higher, and he braced himself for death. Then his son’s face flashed into his mind, and he wavered. He wanted to see his boy graduate one day. And he couldn’t bear the thought of him being disappointed in his father. If the truth was revealed, he would be. He might even go looking for his birth mother and that would devastate the boy’s mother.

  Desperate, he reached for the weapon. He’d come too far to give up now. “Let it go, Eleanor. I’ll take care of things like I always have.”

  But Eleanor’s hand wobbled, and he heard the click of the gun’s chamber….

  AN EERIE CHILL SLID UP Elsie’s spine as she entered the dark basement. Pungent, rancid odors swirled around her, even more acrid than they had been when she was a child. Dark shadows claimed the corners, rising and drifting through the dank concrete-floored room like monsters. From the right side, the shrill scream of a baby’s cry shattered the silence, the hollow wail of a young girl in pain following.

  The sound was her own voice. Her own baby’s cry. Its futile struggle for a breath. The moment the baby grew quiet.

  Or the screams of the girls who lay behind the walls?

  She shuddered, remembering the cold, hard clink of medical tools on steel tables, the plea for help from the room on the left where the doctor sometimes examined the girls. The smaller room in the back where Hodges took them for his own sick pleasure.

  A loud noise crashed into her reverie, and she blinked and saw Deke pounding a hatchet into the stone. The sheriff and his deputy worked in a different area, all diligently searching to see if the girls’ bodies truly lay behind the walls.

  She hugged her arms around herself, trying desperately to hold herself together, but her legs felt like jelly, and dizziness made the room spin. A blinding sea of light and darkness trapped her in the past. She should help, do something. She should have done more back then.

  The seconds ticked by as if she’d fallen into a vortex and couldn’t escape. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Would the cries of the children ever stop?

  “I found something.” Deke lowered his tool, and swiped at his forehead, perspiration dampening his hair and trickling down his neck. She bit her lip and stood, then hesitated. She wasn’t sure she could look.

  “It’s a body,” the sheriff said in a flat tone.

  “I found another one!” the deputy shouted.

  “Oh, my God,” Elsie whispered. “It’s true.”

  Hadn’t she been afraid for her life each time he approached her? She’d cowered like a terrified animal, and had obeyed him out of fear. Just like Hattie Mae.

  The coroner had gone to the morgue with the first body, but the sheriff phoned him to return and collect the others.

  Elsie’s stomach lurched at the sight of a bone protruding from the opening. She ran up the stairs, then into the bathroom and fell to her knees, purging the contents of her stomach. If Hodges had killed the girls because they disobeyed him, or because they refused to give up their children, he would have eventually killed her. And what if they found more bodies?

  The guilt she’d felt over Hodges’s death drained from her. She was glad he was dead. No longer would she pray for forgiveness. In fact, her only regret was that she should have killed him sooner.

  DEKE’S MIND SPUN with the reality of the truths they’d uncovered. Girls murdered and buried on the property and inside the house. No wonder people thought ghosts lived in the manor, and believed the devil lived in the forest.

  How had Elsie survived this horrendous place? And to do so, and have a heart of gold, to want to devote herself to helping others and turn this place around—it was a miracle.

  No, she was a miracle. Her inner strength amazed him. He’d never admired a woman more.

  He fisted his hands, knowing emotions were dangerous. He had to concentrate. Think like a detective.

  The sheriff, his deputy and the crime scene unit finally finished, and Deke went upstairs in search of Elsie. She hadn’t looked well when she’d run from the room. He understood the feeling. His skin crawled, the inhumanity of Hodges’s actions too horrific to believe.

  He found Elsie pale and trembling, huddled on the sofa beneath a blanket, Hattie Mae’s journal clutched in her hands.

  He knelt beside her and stroked his hands up and down her arms. God, he wished she hadn’t had to witness the gruesome scene in the basement. “Are you okay, Elsie?”

  Her tearstained eyes met his. “I should have realized,” she whispered raggedly.

  “Don’t, Elsie,” he said in a gruff voice. “You did everything you could. You were just a kid yourself. You’d been abandoned and abused. You must have been terrified of Hodges.”

  She lowered her eyelashes and he pressed his palm against her cheek.

  “Hodges was monster, a psychopath. He never should have been around children.” Deke tried to control his anger. “I’m going to find that social worker who was in charge of overseeing the orphanage and find out the reason she didn’t report him.”

  “I don’t understand, either,” Elsie said, a hollow look in her eyes.

  He gestured toward the journal. “Did you learn anything else from the book?”

  She clamped her teeth over her lower lip. “He killed them because they didn’t want to give up their babies. They defied him and tried to run away.”

  Deke’s throat closed. Elsie had defied him by running away, too. If he’d caught her, he would have murdered her, too.

  His stomach rolled, and he slid a hand in her hair, grateful she’d survived. “I’m glad you left this place, Elsie. I…you had amazing courage.”

  While he had depended on his brother to take care of things and had rebelled in anger, Elsie had been completely alone.

  “Elsie—”

  “You don’t understand, Deke. I wasn’t strong, I was terrified of him. I let him intimidate me, make me do things I didn’t want to do. Such ugly things….”

  His throat tightened. “I wish I could change the past, but I can’t. We can change the future though. Together.”

  “You’re right,” she said, lifting her chin. “But I need to talk to Burt Thompson. He…may know more about the murders.”

  The sheriff lumbered in and Deke frowned. He thought the man had already left.

  “Miss Timmons, I need Hattie Mae’s journal as evidence.” He gestured toward the book she held. “Is that it?”


  “Yes.” Elsie tightened her grip on the diary. “Can I finish it first?”

  He shook his head. “It’s part of an official murder investigation. I have to take it now. Hattie Mae might have told us more about those girls. Maybe she killed them out of jealousy.”

  “No. Mr. Hodges was responsible,” Elsie said, still clinging to the book.

  The sheriff extended his hand, his expression stony. “I still need it. There might be more victims mentioned later on.”

  Deke understood Elsie’s reluctance to hand over the diary. She didn’t trust the sheriff. And neither did he.

  What if Bush destroyed the journal without revealing the contents?

  IN SPITE OF THE COLD, sweat streamed down Sheriff Bush’s face as he laid the journal on the seat beside him and headed into town. Thank God the Timmons girl had confessed that she’d found the book. He had to read its contents and see what Hattie Mae had said about Wildcat Manor, about who all had been involved. Him. Thompson. Mires.

  How much did she actually know about the adoptions?

  sight of those teenagers’ skeletons sent a sick feeling to his stomach that rippled all the way up into his throat. He had done a lot of good in this town over the years. But would it make up for the bad?

  Would anyone understand the reason he’d turned his back against the goings-on at the orphanage?

  Probably not. He was the sheriff, sworn to serve and protect. But choices weren’t always divvied up into nice neat packages with easy answers. It was the hard ones that made you stretch your morals, made you cross the line.

  He gripped the steering wheel as he rounded the mountain, gears grinding to keep the car from sliding on the ice, and barreling down the ridge. Although he already felt as if he was standing on the precipice, about to go over the edge.

  He punched in Doc Mires’s number. He had to ask him about the dead girls, tell him about the journal. Then he’d talk to Burton, find out why Elsie was still in town.

  The phone rang several times, then clicked over to the answering service. Damn. He left a message for Mires to call him immediately, then phoned Thompson.

  Thompson hissed as Bush explained about finding the bodies.

  “Jesus, I had no idea he’d buried anyone out there.”

  “Me, neither,” Bush said. “But do you honestly think anyone will believe us?”

  “No,” Thompson said in a shaky voice. “Not when we covered up the adoption ring and Hodges’s indiscretions.”

  “I wish to hell I’d never met Howard Hodges,” Bush said. “I…didn’t realize how sick the man was.”

  “Ditto.”

  A dull pain hit Bush’s chest. He loosened his collar and tried to breathe. “I’ll read Hattie Mae’s journal. See what she revealed.”

  “I’ll take care of the girl myself,” Thompson said matter-of-factly.

  Bush finally drew a breath. Thompson had always been the power behind the bunch. A money-hungry lawyer who never wavered from his own personal goals. The one without a conscience.

  Bush hung up, then steered the car toward Donna’s. He’d check on her and Eleanor, make sure they hadn’t done something stupid. The last thing he needed was for them to panic, draw suspicion and make more trouble.

  ELSIE CLUTCHED the sheer curtain and stared outside at the woods. Night had fallen over Wildcat Manor, the dismal grays and blacks surrounding the house a reminder of the bodies that had been found and removed today. What if there were others? More girls buried on the grounds?

  Deke had ordered Elsie to lock the door with the gun by her side, while he hiked into the woods to check for anything suspicious. Grounds disturbed. Mounds that looked as if they might have served as a grave.

  Elsie’s palms grew sweaty, her heart pounding with fear. What if he found her baby’s grave? Then he would know the truth….

  Had Hattie mentioned Elsie’s deliver in her journal? A few moments ago, Deke had called her courageous.

  He would think differently if he learned that she’d been so starved for love and attention that she’d slept with a fifteen-year-old boy. That she’d been so stupid she’d gotten pregnant.

  That she’d wanted the baby, but that she had failed her daughter.

  Heart breaking, she could stand it no longer. She’d been away from her baby for ten years. Had run but had never escaped the guilt of leaving her behind.

  Emotions raged inside her like the storms outside, and she grabbed her coat and the gun, then the flowers on the table that she’d purchased the day she’d bought the paint and fabric in town. Ten years and she’d never gotten to visit her baby’s grave, never mourned by her side or brought flowers to her grave on her birthday or holidays.

  She had to do it now.

  Tugging her hood over her head, she fought the wind as she raced outside. Tears fell like raindrops onto the ground, her shoes clutching at the ice and mud to keep from falling. She dashed past the pond, hearing the shrill cry of death, then fled to the mound of trees at the edge of the forest near the garden until she located the tiny smattering of rocks that marked her baby’s grave. Her hands trembled as she knelt, sorrow overwhelming her. Weeds and twigs covered the small area, and a feather from a hawk lay at the foot of the grave. It wasn’t right that her baby didn’t have a proper burial, that she had no marker, no tombstone to announce her birth, no epitaph to lay claim to her existence.

  Elsie would rectify that matter.

  Suddenly, that gesture, that recognition, meant more to her than her own shame.

  The wind hurled debris across the mound, and she wiped it off angrily. The scent of whiskey floated toward her. Blood. Evil.

  Someone was nearby.

  She angled her head to look, but someone struck her from behind. Pain exploded in her temple. She gripped her head and tried to scream, but her voice died in the wind. Then her attacker shoved her facedown into the ground.

  Chapter Twelve

  Elsie gasped for air, eating dirt as she struggled to free herself from her attacker. She kicked backward, tried to jab her elbow into his stomach or groin, but missed. He yanked her head up, then slammed it against the hard ground again. Stars swam before her eyes, and she frantically reached for the gun. It was only inches away.

  But just as her fingers connected with metal, he grabbed the weapon and pressed the barrel to the back of her head.

  Fear rippled through her, just as regrets slammed into her conscience. Regrets for everything that had happened at Wildcat Manor. Regrets for not having the courage to face her mother.

  But the wind fluttered the hawk’s feather, and she focused on where it lay at the foot of her baby’s grave. Deke’s face flashed into her mind. The long chiseled nose. The broad jaw. His dark, enigmatic eyes. Regrets of a different kind poured

  She had never had a man kiss her as he had, never wanted a man so badly. But she hadn’t had the courage to face him with the truth, either.

  The man dug his knee into her back, and she winced, summoning her determination. She hadn’t come this far to lie down and die.

  No, she was a fighter.

  Think about the streets. Hit the major points. Eyes, solar plexus, groin…

  “You should have left town,” he growled in her ear.

  Elsie cried out in pain as he twisted one arm behind her back and stretched it upward at an odd angle. He was going to yank it from the socket.

  “Now it’s your turn to die, Elsie. “His foul breath brushed her cheek. “Would you like to go in the ground or in the basement walls like the others?”

  Horror made her skin crawl. She punched backward with her elbow, straight into his groin. He howled and released the pressure on her arm. “Damn it, you bitch!”

  She bucked backward, throwing him off balance, then rolled to her stomach and kicked both feet upward, connecting with his face. The gun toppled from his hands, and she scrambled to retrieve it.

  “I think the basement—you always liked it down there, didn’t you!” he bellowed.

&n
bsp; She tried to lurch to her feet, but he yanked her foot to hold her back. Her hands dug into the ground for control, but he crawled after her, his face shrouded by the trees and a black cape. She kicked backward at his face with her other foot, then grabbed the gun. A second later, she rolled over, and reached for the trigger. The gunshot blasted the air, along with his growl of anger.

  But she missed, and he lunged toward her.

  THE BLOOD RUSHED to Deke’s head.

  The gunshot. Elsie was in trouble.

  He took off running, his heart racing as he cut through the thick brush and trees, slinging mud from his boots as he went. The snap of twigs breaking and ice cracking splintered the air, mimicking his heavy breathing. Elsie had to be all right. She had to be.

  He couldn’t face finding her hurt or…no, he wouldn’t think negative thoughts. Elsie was a fighter. Hopefully, she had fired the gun to save herself or get his attention. Or maybe someone else had fired it at her.

  He never should have left her alone.

  Above him, the hawks sailed, their long wingspans crackling the air as they soared above the trees. Their flight pattern was taking him toward the manor, as if instinctively they sensed someone he cared about was in danger.

  Seconds later, he burst through the clearing. “Elsie!”

  He screamed her name repeatedly, scanning the edges of the forest, then followed the birds around the back of the house. “Elsie!”

  Suddenly, he saw her on the ground, the gun aimed at a dark hooded figure. Fury ran through him, and he removed his .38, paused and aimed at the man’s back. He pivoted slightly, and Deke took aim again, then pulled the trigger and sent a bullet flying. Elsie’s attacker dodged sideways, and the bullet hit the tree beside him. Then he fled into the forest.

  Deke’s heart hammered in his chest as he raced through the edge of the woods to Elsie.

  She pushed to her feet, turned and aimed her gun toward the woods and fired, but the man had disappeared.