“Give me your keys! I’ll go for help.”
The sound he emitted was part groan and part laugh. “I don’t want…the kind of help you’ll be bringing.”
“Then you’re going to die,” she told him.
“That’d be…better than…prison.”
She dropped the ax and pressed a hand to her own injury to stanch the bleeding. “I still need those keys.”
She thought she saw the whites of his teeth as he grinned at her. “Fine. They’re in…my front pocket. Feel free…to reach down there…and fish around.”
She’d wait until he passed out, tie him up and then take the keys, she decided. But she didn’t have to wait. The sound of a car engine drew her to the front window, where she saw headlights coming through the trees.
Standing in the open doorway, she watched dispassionately as Clay’s truck came to a stop. It was over. She’d survived.
But the whole world had changed. Ray was not the upstanding citizen she’d always thought. Her father hadn’t been a man of God. He hadn’t been worthy of her love or respect. Her stepmother and stepsiblings weren’t innocent. And she was in love with a man she’d met just a few days earlier, a man who probably wasn’t ready to love her back.
She glanced behind her at the bleeding Ray. She’d done that to him, although she’d never dreamed she’d be capable of such a thing.
Even she was different now than she’d been a week ago.
“Thank God I listened to you,” Clay murmured to Hunter.
Clay hung back a few steps as the investigator approached the cabin. He didn’t know how Madeline would greet him, was afraid to learn what had happened before they’d been able to find her.
Madeline didn’t move forward, didn’t rush into his arms as Clay wished she would. Her eyes flicked toward Hunter and, for a moment, she looked as if she might crumple. But she didn’t. Clay saw her stiffen and squint against the harsh glare of the headlights as she turned her attention to him.
“Madeline?” Hunter said hesitantly, gently.
“He got the worst of it.” She stood there unmoving, her hair tangled and matted. Mascara ran down her face in tracks that showed the path of earlier tears, one eye was swollen, both corners of her mouth were cut, and she had an injury on one arm. She looked like she’d been through hell. And there was blood everywhere, on her clothes and arms, on the floor.
Hunter shook his head. “I knew he’d visited that site for a reason.”
But if they hadn’t—at Hunter’s insistence—pulled off the road to use a pay phone and spoken to Brian Shulman, they never would’ve found it.
Hunter touched her elbow. “Where is he?”
“Inside,” she said, staring directly at Clay.
Clay cleared his throat, overwhelmed by the relief he felt for her, as well as all the other emotions welling up inside him. “So you’re okay?” he asked, bracing for the rejection he expected.
Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks, making fresh lines through the smudged mascara.
“Tell me you’re okay,” he murmured.
“Where’d you put his body?” she asked point-blank.
She was talking about her father, of course, not Ray. The moment Clay had long been expecting had finally arrived.
He glanced at Hunter, hoping for a few minutes of privacy, but he didn’t have to spell that out. Hunter was already slipping past her to find Ray. A second later, Clay could hear them talking, but what he cared about was happening right here, so he didn’t bother listening.
“Are you going to tell me?” she asked.
Clay had never trusted another soul with the truth about that terrible night. Except Allie. But the truth was all he had to offer now. “Behind the barn.”
She bit down on her knuckles. Clay wanted to pull her to him, to help her bear the pain and disappointment, the same way they’d dealt with other problems since they’d become family. But this time he was the source of that pain and disappointment.
“The police searched the entire yard.”
“I’d already moved him.”
He was grateful she didn’t ask where. He knew it would be too upsetting to her. “Why’d you do it? Why not go to the police?”
“It wasn’t something we planned, Maddy.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“It was an accident.” After all the lies, he wasn’t sure if she’d believe him, so he tried to explain. He couldn’t shelter her from the truth, not anymore. “Mom caught him with Grace, doing—you know what he was doing, right?”
More tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them back and lifted her chin. “I know what he was doing.”
Clay nodded and continued. “When she said she was going to turn him in, he got mad and started hitting her.” Clay thought Madeline might argue or insist her father would never strike a woman, but she didn’t.
“So you got involved,” she said dully.
“Yes.” The memories were still so fresh it felt like only yesterday that he was digging the grave, mopping up the blood, lying to the police. “And when he turned on me, and the violence got out of hand, Mom panicked and hit him over the head with the butcher block.”
“That’s it?”
He hated the agony he saw on her face but couldn’t do anything about it. “That’s it. She didn’t mean to kill him. Only to get him off me.”
Her voice fell to a tortured whisper. “But if it was an accident, why didn’t you call the police, Clay? Why would you hide something like that?”
“Do you think we should’ve called them up and told them their town’s esteemed preacher was a pedophile, Maddy? That we got into a fight over it and accidentally killed him? Who would’ve believed us?”
She covered her face with her hands, but now that he’d begun, he had to tell her the whole truth.
“There was proof. He’d taken—” he struggled to break the news as gently as possible “—pictures of Grace. She told us about them afterward, and we found them in his office. But we couldn’t take them to the police. They would’ve used them to establish a clear and powerful motive. Almost everyone in Stillwater was pressing the cops to put Mom or me in prison. And if that happened, you and Grace and Molly would’ve been taken into foster care. Our family would’ve been destroyed.”
She dropped her hands. “But you lied to me. You’ve lied to me all these years. Everyone knew but me.”