But in the grayness of the day, Vernon suddenly reared. Behind Matt, Lavinia screamed, trying to maintain her seat. Matt controlled his panicked horse, then saw the dark bundle in the road ahead of him. He dismounted quickly, hunkering down, his heart in his throat.
It wasn’t Darcy.
“Clint!” He set his fingers against his cousin’s throat. There was a pulse. Clint groaned, turning. There was a massive lump on his temple. He stared up at Matt with dazed eyes. “Matt.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know…I was lost. Then someone hit me. I saw the butt of an Enfield rifle come out of the smoke…and that was it.”
“Where’s Darcy?”
“She was with me. I was going to bring her to meet you at the far field…I was disoriented, tried to figure out which way I was going…I’m seeing black spots, Matt. I thought my whole skull was crushed.”
Matt turned back to Lavinia, drawing his phone from the his torically incorrect pocket in his captain’s coat. He threw the phone to her.
“Get help. And stay with Clint!” he told her.
“Matt, you don’t understand, I need to come with you—” she said.
“Get off the horse and stay with Clint!” he commanded.
Lavinia went white. Matt leapt back on Vernon, and kneed the horse, the feeling of urgency now tearing into him. And the voice…
This way, hurry, this way, ride hard, hurry….
Carter held Darcy’s ankle and was crawling forward with a deadly urgency, using her legs as a line to come closer.
Darcy kicked out furiously, trying to loosen his grasp.
“Killing me isn’t going to help you!” she cried out. “Don’t you see, they’ll know, they’ll all know!”
“You’re going over the bridge, Darcy. You’ll have fallen. Everyone knows you’re accident prone.”
“No, Carter! They’ll find the bones. They’ll identify the body, don’t you see, it’s over! Carter, I don’t know what she knew, or what she saw, or what she wrote that so incensed you…but it didn’t matter, did it? You’d already decided you were going to kill her. Who was she? The woman you supposedly loved so much?”
His eye was already beginning to swell. He looked horrible. Blood matted his beard; she had managed a few good strikes.
But his hands still had a strength like steel in them.
“Carter! I’ve scratched you. Your flesh is beneath my nails.”
His hand moved; he got a solid grip on her calf, his face taut, muscles clenched, jaw in a grim and lethal line.
“The skeleton in the smokehouse, Darcy? She was Susan Howell. And what was she writing? She was going to tell Matt that I’d been having an affair with his wife—and more, of course. She was going to suggest that he look into my past. There were a few before her, you see. Catherine Angsley. Catherine didn’t have to die, but she had loaned me some money, and then the little bitch got all furious and wanted it back when I didn’t have it. But they’ll never find her. She’s deep in the Blue Ridge. They’ll never find the others, either. I never should have brought any of them to Melody House, but you see, the old man had died, Matt was busy with his work and the fact that his marriage was falling apart…and that night, there was no one at Melody House. No one. Susan had gone there because I’d taken her there before, and because she wanted to feel that she had a right to be in the house. She was really not a nice person, Darcy. And you know, she was buried in that smokehouse for years…years! No one would have found her. But now, you have.”
He got a fierce hold on her thigh. She struggled to sit, nails clawing at his flesh. He roared like a wounded animal, but didn’t let go. Holding on to her despite the violence of her fight, he dragged himself to his feet, still clutching her. Dragging her.
“Carter, you’re ill! You need help.”
“Bull!” He went still for a minute, ready to laugh despite the circumstances. “I knew what I was doing every step of the way. There’s nothing wrong with me. Hell, I have a mind and a will of steel. No one has ever so much as suspected me.”
He had her against the rail. He tried to lift her but she fought too hard. Still, he had stamina. Little by little, he was pressing her back. Darcy could hear the water rushing over the boulders and stones below. Far below.
“Josh! Help me!” she cried out.
It gave him a start. He paused, if only for a second, looking around.
“Who the hell is Josh?”
“A ghost.”
“A ghost! You’re calling on a ghost? Shit, Darcy!” He laughed again, maintaining his hold. She struggled, getting a grip on his beard, pulling hard. He reached down to his calf, pressing his body against hers so that he didn’t lose his hold. A second later, he’d drawn a Bowie knife from the sheath at his ankle and pressed it against her throat.
“You’re going over, Darcy,” he said flatly.
A blade in her throat…or boulders crushing her bones. Not much of a choice. But she could no longer fight him, not with the knife pressing into her flesh.
“Carter!”
The harsh cry, coming from the trail before the bridge, startled them both.
Matt burst out of the mist, drawing Vernon to a halt right at the foot of the bridge, just feet away.
“Carter, let her go. Now.”
Carter was dead still for several seconds. Then a feral smile twisted his lips.
“Come make me, Matt. Be careful, though. You know how good these Bowie knives are. I can slit her jugular in less than a second.”
His eyes never leaving Carter’s, Matt dismounted from Vernon and strode firmly toward the bridge.
“Stop there, or she’s a gusher, I promise,” Carter said.
Matt stood motionless, aware of the knife at Darcy’s throat. He didn’t look at her, though. He kept his eye contact on Carter.
“It’s over, Carter. The FBI is looking for you.”
“They may be looking for me, Matt. But they won’t find me. Hey, we both know this place. Get into the mountains…and we can disappear for good.”
“Carter, if you let Darcy go now, we can work something out.”
“I don’t think so, Matt. Actually, this is rather amusing. There you are, the great Sheriff Stone. The Stone of Stoneyville. Negotiation, yep, that’s one talent you really pride yourself with having. Talk, stall, talk, stall. And imagine, all this going on beneath your nose, and you didn’t know! You know, once you kill, you figure out that’s it’s really pretty easy. Especially when you get involved with the right people. Women looking for something they can’t have. Like the right guy, true love, support and warmth and all that crap. Pretty ones, of course. Only problem is, sometimes, when you think it just might be a go, they turn out to be bitches, all judgmental, not really what they pretend to be at all. I’m no maniac, Matt.”
Matt put his hands on his hips. “So what, then? Carter? You’re going to kill Darcy in front of me? You make another move, and you’re a dead man as well.”
“How you going to manage that, Matt? You’ve got a rifle there, but hell, no shot. You’re a reenactor today. No real bullets—on anyone. Too much of a danger to the crowd.”
“I’ll kill you with my bare hands, Carter,” Matt said with low but vehement sincerity. “I swear it.”
“So…we all die. Here and now,” Carter said.
“Carter!”
The cry came from a woman. Darcy could barely move her head; she could almost taste the steel at her throat, but she strained to see past Matt and was amazed to see Lavinia come running down the trail. Her beautiful violet eyes were huge; her usually perfect hair had escaped its Civil War coils and was a tangle around her face.
“Carter!” she tried again, gasping too hard to speak more.
“Did you know that we had a hot and heavy affair, Matt?” Carter said casually. “For once, I bested the great sheriff! It was actually hard not to let you know, but then again, I loved the ease of hanging around Melody House.”
“I don’t give a damn if you slept with Lavinia, Carter.”
Carter smiled, looking past Matt at Lavinia. “Did you come to help me, sweetheart? Have you got a gun on you? If so, just go ahead and shoot the sucker.”
That, at last, drew Matt’s eyes from Carter. He stared at Lavinia in amazement and horror. Had she been in on it? Had she become so involved with Carter that she had actually been his accomplice in murder?
And did she have a gun, secreted away in her voluminous skirts?
Lavinia found her voice at last. “Carter, for the love of God, let her go!” she said.
“Lavinia, you’ve turned pansy on me. Didn’t you want a wild life of reckless adventure, far more than the sheriff intended to give you, no matter what his pedigree?”
Darcy could feel the blade, chafing into her flesh. She felt a thin trickle of blood drip down her neck.
“Carter, let her go,” Matt said. “I swear, if you do, you’ll get a trial with the best lawyers. If you hurt her in any way, I’ll rip your throat out with my bare hands, I swear it.”
Darcy felt his hand jerk. The blade cut more deeply. She was certain that she was dead. Matt would avenge her, of that she was certain, too.
But she would be dead already. A new ghost to haunt the realm of Melody House.
It was then that the white mist reappeared. It seemed to form at the base of the bridge, between Matt’s position and the place where Carter had her back arched over the bridge.
“It’s Susan!” she cried, “Carter, she’s here! It’s Susan.”
“Bull—!” he began. But his eyes widened suddenly. Darcy didn’t know what anyone else saw; she wasn’t certain what she saw herself. But the mist moved, and Carter froze, as if paralyzed with disbelief and horror.
“It’s Susan, and she’s come to avenge her own death!” Darcy breathed.