Shifting just a little, he felt the crowbar at his back and eased it out behind him. He knew he would get only one chance if RJ was still armed. He would have to make it count.
“You know, RJ, you might have pulled it off,” Josey was saying. Jack realized she was stalling, giving him time. “The way you set me up when you killed your father, that was brilliant.”
“Thanks.” RJ sounded touched that she thought so. “I hated that mean old son of a bitch. I don’t know why I didn’t kill him sooner.”
Jack heard something in RJ’s voice and the way he was trying to catch his breath. He was bleeding badly and Jack suspected Josey had nicked a lung.
“Where you went wrong was taking Celeste along with you.”
“Tell me,” RJ agreed, struggling with each breath.
Josey had to have heard it, as well. She would be thinking that if she kept him talking...
Slowly, methodically, trying not to make a sound, Jack worked his way to a crouch. RJ’s threats covered most any noise Jack had made.
“She was only after your money,” Josey said. “I think you’re better off without her.”
“Uh-huh,” RJ agreed. “You aren’t going to suggest that I hook up with you, are you?” His laugh sounded as if he was underwater. “A woman who shot me not once, but twice?”
It wasn’t until Jack was ready, the crowbar in his hand, that he saw a glint of metal and realized what RJ was holding to Josey’s neck.
MCCALL HEARD VOICES and followed the low rumble down the hallway, then stopped just outside the room. She heard a man’s voice, threatening to kill someone. Not her cousin Jack’s voice. RJ’s? She could only assume so.
Then she heard a woman’s voice, scared, but in control. Josey Vanderliner? Where was Jack? Hadn’t her grandmother said something about Josey going after Jack?
Leading with the weapon, McCall swept it across the room, taking in the scene and making a decision in that split second.
She’d heard everything said within the room and knew that RJ had some kind of weapon in his possession and planned to kill Josey. He sounded bad, but she knew that some men, especially those that took certain drugs, didn’t die easily.
When she saw the knife RJ was holding to Josey’s throat and her cousin Jack armed with a crowbar and ready to risk his life for this woman he called his wife, McCall didn’t hesitate. She pulled the trigger.
Chapter Fourteen
It was chaos after that. Jack lunged forward even as RJ fell away from Josey, the shot to his head killing him instantly. Jack lunged, knocking the knife away from Josey’s throat with the crowbar in the same instant McCall fired.
McCall heard her grandmother and Enid behind her. Heard the gasps. Jack was cradling Josey in his arms. Past them, McCall saw the hole in the rock wall and what appeared to be a mummified body lying in what was left of an old canvas tarp.
“It’s Call Winchester,” Enid cried. “Just like Alfred said.”
McCall rounded up everyone and got them all back to the house, but not before she’d seen the expression on her grandmother’s face as she looked at the mummified body behind the wall.
“I’m going to need statements from all of you,” McCall announced after going to her patrol car and calling for backup, an ambulance and a coroner. “Starting with you. I assume you are Josey Vanderliner?”
Josey nodded.
“The rest of you just sit here quietly.”
She took Josey down the hall to the first room McCall had ever seen in this house just a month ago. It had taken a while, but her grandmother had accepted her as a Winchester.
Now, though, McCall was wondering if that was such a good thing, as she turned on the small tape recorder she’d retrieved from the patrol SUV.
“Tell me what happened here tonight,” she said to Josey, and listened to the horrific story the young woman told, beginning with the murder of Ray Allan Evans Sr. in Palm City, California, and finishing with RJ holding a knife to her throat.
“I heard him confess to the murder of his father,” McCall said, when Josey finished.
“Jack didn’t know anything.”
McCall smiled, thinking that her cousin was a Winchester. He knew something was up with this woman he’d picked up on the road. He’d helped her disguise her looks and given her a place to hide out. But she kept those thoughts to herself, secretly admiring Jack. There would be no charges of harboring a criminal since Josey Vanderliner had been a victim herself.
After that, McCall talked to Jack. “You knew there was a body behind that rock wall?”
“I thought it might just be a rumor.”
She nodded. “Do you believe Enid that her husband, Alfred, killed Call Winchester?”
Jack grinned. Even though he was blond and blue-eyed, McCall saw the Winchester shining through. “I would have no idea.”
She laughed, shaking her head. “The old gal got to you, too.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jack said.
Enid repeated the same story she’d told on the way to the house, swearing that Alfred had killed Call and that the only reason she’d kept silent all these years was that Alfred had threatened to kill her, as well.
McCall didn’t believe a word of it.
Her grandmother looked pale by the time she came into the room. She sat down heavily, still holding her cane, appearing a little dazed.
“You must have wondered what happened to your husband,” McCall said to her grandmother.
Pepper looked up, her eyes misting over. “I loved your grandfather. But it was a relief not to ever have to see him again because I did love him, and being around him hurt so badly, loving and hating him at the same time.”
McCall was surprised at her grandmother’s
