As tears slipped down her cheeks, he silently cursed himself for not seeing this coming.
Perhaps he'd relied too heavily on the fact that BethAnn wasn't a particularly deep person.
Anyway, she'd get over him as soon as some other man strolled through the Piggly Wiggly.
"What about your sisters? You love them," she said. "You'd take a bullet for Grace or Molly, even Madeline."
What he'd done for his sisters was a case of too little, too late. But BethAnn wouldn't understand that. She didn't know what had happened that long-ago night. No one did, besides him, his mother and his two natural sisters. Even his stepsister Madeline, Reverend Barker's only natural child, had no clue. She'd been living with them at the time, but as fate would have it, she'd spent that night at a girlfriend's.
"That's different," he said.
Silence. Hurt. Then, "You're an ass**le, you know that?"
"Better than you do, I'm sure."
When he wouldn't give her a target, she drew herself up onto her knees. "You've been using me all along, haven't you!"
"No more than you've been using me," he replied calmly, and pulled on his boots.
"I haven't been using you! I want to marry you!"
"You only want what you can't have."
"That's not true!"
"You knew what you were getting into from the start. I warned you before you ever peeled off that trench coat."
She glanced wildly around the room as though stunned to recognize he was really through with her. "But I thought...I thought that for me you might--"
"Stop it," he said.
"No. Clay." Climbing out of bed, she came toward him as if she'd wrap her arms around his neck and cling for dear life.
He put up a hand to stop her before she could reach him. Not even the sight of her full br**sts, swinging above her flat stomach and toned legs, could change his mind. Part of him wanted to live and love like any other man. To have a family. But he felt empty inside. Dead. As dead as the man buried in his cellar. "I'm sorry," he said.
When she saw how little her pleading affected him, her top lip curled and her eyes hardened into shiny emeralds. "You son of a bitch! You...you're not going to get away with this.
I...I'm going to..." She gave a desperate sob and lunged toward the nightstand, grabbing for the phone.
Because Beth Ann was so prone to histrionics, Clay guessed she was playing some kind of dramatic game, possibly hoping to get one of her many male admirers to drive over and pick her up, even though she had a car parked outside. He watched dispassionately. He didn't care if she used the phone, as long as she left right afterward. This was a blow to her pride, not her heart, and it couldn't have come as a surprise.
But she pressed only three buttons and, in the next second, screamed into the receiver:
"Help! Police! Clay Montgomery's trying to k-kill me! I know what he did to the rev--"
Crossing the room in three long strides, Clay wrenched the phone from her and slammed down the receiver. "Have you lost your mind?" he growled.
She was breathing hard. With her gleaming, frantic eyes and curly blond hair falling in tangles about her shoulders, she looked like an evil witch. No longer pretty.
"I hope they put you in prison," she said, her voice a low, hateful murmur. "I hope they put you away for life!"
Scooping her clothes off the floor, she hurried into the hall, leaving Clay shaking his head.
Evidently she didn't grasp that she already had her wish. Maybe he wasn't in a physical prison, but he was paying the price for what had happened nineteen years ago--and would be for the rest of his life.
Officer Allie McCormick couldn't believe what came through her police radio. Pulling onto the shoulder of the empty country road she'd been patrolling since midnight, she put her cruiser in Park. "What did you say?"
The county dispatcher finally swallowed whatever she had in her mouth. "I said I just got a call from 10682 Old Barn Road."
Allie recognized the address. She'd seen it all over the case files she'd been studying since she and her six-year-old daughter had moved back to Stillwater and in with her parents several weeks ago. "That's the Montgomery farm."
"There's a possible 10-31 C in progress."
"A homicide?"
"That's what the caller said."
Allie thought there might have been one murder committed on that property years ago--if the Reverend Barker hadn't disappeared of his own volition. But there'd never been any proof.
This was probably a prank. Kids screwing around because of all the rumors that had circulated about Clay and his missing stepfather.
"Was it a man or woman you spoke to?"
"A woman. And she seemed damn convincing. She was so panicked I could barely understand her. Then the call was disconnected."
Shit. Skeptical or not, Allie figured that couldn't be good. "I'm not far. I can be there in less than five minutes." Peeling out, she raced down the road.
"You want me to rouse Hendricks for backup?" the dispatcher asked, still on the line.
The other officer on graveyard wasn't the best Allie had ever worked with, but if there was trouble, he'd be better than nothing. "Might as well try. I'll bet he's sleeping at the station again, though. I caught him with his chin on his chest an hour ago, and once he's out, an earthquake won't raise him."
"I could call your dad at home."
"No. Don't bother him. If you can't get Hendricks, I'll handle this on my own." Hanging up, she flipped on her strobe lights to warn any vehicles she might encounter that she was in a hurry, but didn't bother with the siren. Once she got near the farmhouse, she'd turn it on to let the panicking victim know that help had arrived. Until then, the noise would only rattle her nerves.
She wasn't completely comfortable being a street cop again. She was too rusty at the job. As a detective in Chicago, she'd spent the last seven years working mostly in an office, the past five in the cold case unit. But her divorce, and coming home so that she and her daughter would be closer to family, meant she'd had to make some sacrifices. Hitting the streets was one of them.
Rain began to plink against her windshield as she drove down Pine Road and hung a skidding left at the highway. It had been a wet spring, but she preferred it to the terrible humidity they were facing as June approached.
Staring intently at the shiny pavement ahead of her, she ignored the rapid swish, swish, swish of her windshield wipers, which were on high but beating only half as fast as her heart.
"What're you up to, Mr. Montgomery?" she muttered. She couldn't imagine he was really trying to kill anyone. Other than an occasional fistfight in the bar, Stillwater had next to no violent crime.