looked back at Jane, who had finally caught her breath and lay in a half-fetal position, sucking in air in deep draughts. “Can you shoot me before I shoot her?”
“Shoot him,” Jane growled breathlessly, gazing up at Joe from beneath the tangle of red hair that had tumbled over her forehead.
A soft rattle of rocks drew Joe’s gaze briefly to the side. Riley Patterson emerged from behind a stand of lodgepole pines, a rifle aimed at Clint Holbrook’s head. “The real question, Agent Holbrook, is which one of us gets to shoot you first.”
Holbrook turned to look at Riley, his aim drifting to the right of Jane. She scrambled up and raced toward Joe, blocking his aim at Holbrook, but it didn’t matter. Three more Canyon Creek police officers appeared on the bridle trail from their hiding places in the pines, weapons pointed at Holbrook.
Holbrook slowly laid his pistol on the ground and raised his hands. “Patterson, you’re making a big mistake here. They’re the fugitives. I’m trying to stop them.”
“Cuff him,” Riley told the other officers.
WHILE THE officers moved toward Clint to take him into custody, Jane flung herself at Joe, wrapping her arms around his waist and burying her face in his chest. He tucked his gun in the back of his jeans and whirled her around, putting himself between her and the others.
“How’d Riley know to come here?” she murmured against his neck.
“There’s a cell tower in the valley just past the bluff. They added it last year. I gave Riley a call before I came out to look for you.” He grinned at her, relief shining in his eyes. “Ain’t technology grand?”
“I love you,” she said, reaching up to hold his face between her hands. “Do you hear me? No matter what else you hear about me in the next few hours, know that I love you.” She hugged him again, looking over his shoulder toward the knot of police officers surrounding Clint.
Suddenly, Clint looked right at her, his blue eyes cold and hard. A mean smile creased his face. And he turned toward the officers who were pulling his hands behind his back to apply the cuffs.
Clint’s right hand found the holster of one of the officers, withdrawing the gun tucked inside. He broke free of them, pushing one policeman into the other two, knocking them all to the ground. Rushing past Riley, who turned too late to stop him, Clint raised the stolen gun toward Joe’s back and met Jane’s gaze over Joe’s shoulder.
Jane reached behind Joe’s back and jerked the pistol out of his waistband. She had no time to think, just pulled it up and pressed the trigger. Once. Twice.
Clint’s gaze widened with surprise. The hand holding the gun fell to his side, the pistol thudding to the ground. He fell to his knees, toppled face forward into the grass, and went deathly still.
Joe let go of Jane and whirled around. Jane saw his body grow stiff with horror as he spotted Clint’s body on the ground and the stolen gun just beyond his outstretched arm.
Riley crossed to Clint, kicking the gun away from his still form. He crouched and felt for a pulse. Looking up at Joe, he shook his head.
Jane pressed her face to Joe’s back and started to cry.
“ARE YOU sure you’re up for this, Joe?” Riley asked as they entered Joe’s house near the edge of town a couple of hours later.
Joe looked at Jane, whose red-rimmed eyes gazed back at him with a mixture of love and anxiety. He caught her hand and squeezed. “Let’s see it.”
Jane released his hand and crossed the room, pausing a moment to look at the makeshift bulletin board where the remains of his investigation still hung from tacks and tape across the entire east wall.
He walked over to her, placing his hands on her shoulders. He pressed a kiss to the back of her head, knowing words weren’t sufficient.
She squared her shoulders beneath his hands and moved past the clippings to the upright piano situated in the corner. She ran her hand over the dusty key guard, wiping her hand on her jeans, a half smile curving her lips, and he knew she was remembering the times she’d played the piano for him when they were together. Then she lowered the panel in front, revealing the hammers and strings, along with a small DVD case tucked between the last two strings on the right. She handed it to Joe.
“Now you’ll know exactly what happened to Tommy.”
“Why do you think he kept this?” he asked. “Did he tell you?”
Jane shook her head. “I think he liked to watch it.” Her voice came out low and strangled. “Relive it over and over.”
“Sick bastard,” Joe murmured.
“I’m so sorry, Joe.”
He touched her face, brushing away the tears under her right eye with his thumb. Then he took the disc to the DVD player across the room and pressed Play, steeling himself to see the answers he’d sought for over a year.
IT WAS almost nightfall before the FBI finished debriefing them and Riley told them they were free to go. The FBI agents assured them they believed their story about the murder of the deputies in Idaho, and that there would be no charges pending under the circumstances.
Joe had driven Jane back to his house and was now in the kitchen, brewing coffee and heating some chicken soup in the microwave, while she curled up on the sofa and reacquainted herself with a part of her past she’d once feared lost to her forever.
Joe came into the room bearing a tray with steaming cups of coffee and two bowls of soup. He laid the tray on the coffee table and sat next to her. “Warm yet?”
She nodded, taking the mug of coffee. She breathed in the dark aroma, steeling herself for the final part of the story that she hadn’t yet told Joe.
“There’s one more thing I have to tell you,” she said.
He took the cup from her hands and set it aside, threading his fingers through hers. He kissed her knuckles. “I love you. I fell in love with you about two minutes after I met you, and not one moment of the hell we’ve been through since then was able to change that. There’s nothing you can say now that will change anything.”
She smiled at his words, so sincere and heartfelt. She knew what it had cost him to let himself love her the first time-what it had cost him to take that chance again, in the face of her lies and secrets. But her last secret belonged to him, too, even if he didn’t know it.
“When I left here, I was pregnant,” she said, blurting it without preamble because there was no good way to prepare him for the truth.
He sat back, a half dozen different expressions fluttering over his face-surprise, confusion and, most heartbreaking of all, a flicker of hope. “We had a baby?”
She tightened her fingers around his. “I lost the baby, Joe. Right after I got away from Clint.”
“Oh, honey.” He stroked her cheek, brushing away a tear she hadn’t even realized she’d shed. “I’m so sorry you went through that alone. Why didn’t you call me?”
She licked her lips, wondering if she should spare him the rest of the story. But she didn’t want any more lies, any more secrets, standing between them. “I came here. To find you. I needed to find you.”
She made herself tell him everything-how she’d escaped from Clint’s compound only to start having contractions immediately, how she’d lost the baby at a nearby hospital, then fled soon after being checked out when she heard Clint arrive, demanding to see her. She’d barely gotten away.
“Then I made my way here,” she said, wiping the tears from her eyes.
“And saw that wall,” he said, as if realizing for the first time what it must have been like for her to see the clippings on the wall, evidence of his loss of faith in her. He stared at her a moment, his eyes wet and his face twisted with regret. Then he lurched from the sofa and threw himself at the wall of clippings, ripping away the pictures and articles he’d tacked there.
She ran to his side, pulling his hands away from the wall. He resisted, his eyes dull with pain. “Stop it, Joe.”
He dropped his hands to his sides, lowering his head until his chin nearly rested on his chest. “I’m so sorry, Jane. I shouldn’t…I didn’t really think you’d…But I was angry and hurt…”
She took his hands in hers. “We both made mistakes. I should have trusted you with the whole truth in the first place, and maybe Tommy would still be alive.”
He met her gaze with pain-dark eyes. “Did he ever tell you why? Why he killed Tommy?”
She licked her lips. “He didn’t want any witnesses when he took me out of here. It was all part of the power
