Buried Truth Read online

After a deep breath, she stepped out onto the planks.

  She heard Bill’s voice clearly now.

  “No, Heather,” he shouted. “Go back.”

  She looked at her feet, carefully placing one after the other as she eased out onto the bridge.

  Bill roared, “Stop!”

  She ignored him. She would get back to her mother, to Bill and Dr. Egan, and Oscar would not win. He could not win.

  Creeping toward the blackened beams, Heather heard the wood creaking and groaning under her weight. She kept as close to the unscorched outer edge as possible. She could hear the tense words from the other side.

  “Don’t,” Dr. Egan said, calling to Bill. “Your weight will add too much stress.”

  Out of the corner of her eye she could see Bill pacing back and forth, his body tense as wire.

  She blocked it all out and inched along. “Help me get across, Lord,” she whispered as she moved along. Without warning a board broke, her foot plunging through. She screamed, clinging to the nearest beam to keep from falling, realizing with horror that her foot was imprisoned in the gap. Afraid to yank too hard, she tried to wriggle her ankle back and forth, but the wood refused to release her.

  She eased down onto the planks and pulled, with no result. Her head throbbed as she tried to decide what to do. A vibration rippled through the wood. She jerked her head up, looking for Oscar.

  It was Bill, easing along as if he was walking on eggshells.

  She could not read the expression on his face. Behind him on the far side, her mother pressed a hand to her mouth. Dr. Egan leaned forward. Crow talked rapidly into his phone. All of them stared at the two on the bridge, eyes riveted to Bill’s slow progress.

  Bill’s dark eyes found hers, glittering like obsidian as he came closer. She wanted to call out to him, to tell him to get her mother and the others away to safety, but she could only stare at him, willing him to come closer, to reach out to her.

  A slight breeze pulled at her hair.

  The sun beat down mercilessly.

  He was close enough now that she could see the dark flash of his eyes, his clenched jaw.

  Help me, Bill.

  Finally his hand grabbed hers.

  “I’m going to loosen your foot.”

  “Oscar …” she panted.

  “Police are on their way.” He eased closer to where her foot was imprisoned and the boards crackled ominously. He froze, sweat running down his forehead.

  Her whole body trembled as he pulled away some of the splintered wood.

  “Try now,” he said.

  She pulled her leg free, sending bits of wood tumbling into the chasm below.

  “Follow me,” he said, turning and crawling a few paces before gingerly getting to his feet.

  It was a torturous journey.

  They edged along, Bill’s strong hand steadying her trembling one.

  The bridge shuddered and crackled under them, bits of wood splintering to fall away as they passed.

  After an eternity, they made it to the edge and stepped off. Heather’s legs gave out and Bill lowered her to the ground, his arms around her, squeezing her breathless against his chest. She felt his heartbeat hammering against her face, the warmth of his tight embrace.

  He pressed his face against her hair. “Heather …” His voice was ragged.

  She didn’t want to move, to rise. All she desired was to stay there safe in Bill’s arms, the warmth of him wrapping around her like the kiss of sunshine.

  Her mother came close, Crow and Dr. Egan following.

  “Why would you do something like that?” Margot’s stunned voice came from far away.

  Oscar, she wanted to scream.

  He’s mad.

  He won’t stop until Bill is dead.

  A wave of horror consumed her. She could only press herself deeper into Bill’s embrace as if it were the only thing in the world that was real.

  From a distance came the wail of sirens.

  TWELVE

  Sunday morning Bill woke to the sound of his phone. He sat bolt upright, startling Tank.

  “Sorry to call so early,” Heather said.

  “No problem. Did you get the new phone I gave you up and running?”

  “Yes, thank you.” She hesitated.

  He understood her awkward formality. Since they’d made it off the bridge, a strange blanket of emotion had wrapped around both of them. For his part, he could not stop thinking about her there, suspended over the gorge, face stark with terror, nor could he seem to let go of the feeling of her next to him, pressed against his chest as if she’d never left. But it couldn’t be. He did not want to rekindle what they’d had. “Everything okay?”

  “Yes, there’s been an officer in front of the house all night.”

  “You and your mother comfortable?”

  “I’m just scraped up a little. Mom is still asleep.”

  “That’s good.” He tried to think of what to say next.

  “I remembered something Oscar said that struck me oddly.”

  Bill straightened. “Go on.”

  “He said you were responsible for the people he’d killed. I think he said ‘my wife, the woman.”

  “The woman?”

  “Yes. I thought it was strange, but I was too scared to ask him to clarify.”

  The thought of her face-to-face with Oscar made his skin crawl. “Thanks for letting me know.”

  “Okay.” A silence filled the line. He should say something, do something. The overwhelming urge to let go of his senses and run back into her life tore at him, but he could only hold the phone to his ear until she mumbled a goodbye and hung up.

  He listened for a moment to the dial tone and knew that he would not reunite with Heather Fernandes because, the ugly truth of it was, he was a coward. He could not face losing her or anyone else again. Besides, it would take all his strength and emotional stamina to go head-to-head with Oscar. So far, he was one step behind the man at every turn.

  Bill flopped back down on the bed and tried to clear his mind. What woman was Oscar referring to in his last encounter with Heather? He had not been linked to any other deaths that Bill was aware of. He grabbed his phone and sent a text to Rudley and Crow. Maybe they had encountered an unsolved murder in the months he’d been gone.

  Where are you, Oscar? The pay phone at the Tribal Ranger office. Mr. Brown’s place. The dilapidated trailer. Oscar would be close, but not too close. Rockvale was a small town and the police had gotten the word out about the escaped fugitive, so he’d have to keep his distance or disguise himself. They’d already checked all the hotels and apartments in the surrounding areas, so it must be something else, a house or a campground, even, but it was close by, he was sure of it.

  The thought dawned on him before he’d finished dressing. There was a place, the perfect place where Oscar could get a bead on the town and still be far enough away to avoid detection. Bill threw on the rest of his clothes and headed for the truck, calling Crow on his way. There was no answer, so he left a message. He considered calling Rudley, but he knew the Feds would cut him out of the capture, and Bill was sure Oscar would do his best to kill Rudley or any other officer who attempted to bring him down.

  He made it to Charlie Moon’s property in record time. Charlie answered the door. “Whaddya want?”

  Bill made sure Tina was not standing behind her uncle listening. “I think Oscar may be hiding out on your property.”

  Charlie blinked. “Here? I would have seen him.” He started to close the door, but Bill stopped it.

  “The caves. The limestone caves on the edge of the bluff, near Brown’s property. He could be there and you would never know. He could come and go on the northern trail and you wouldn’t see him.”

  Charlie shook his head. “I would know.”

  “Okay, let me go look. Just to be sure.”

  Charlie’s face hardened. “I don’t want you on this property.”

  Bill bit back a sharp retort. He tried f
or calm. “Just a quick check, that’s all.”

  “No.”

  “If it will help, I’ll get Crow to do it, or the Feds. I don’t have to be involved.”

  Charlie glared. “I said no.”

  Bill exploded. “I can’t believe you would turn a blind eye to a murderer on your property, especially the guy who killed Johnny.” It was the wrong thing to say. He knew it the moment it left his mouth.

  “Get out of here, Bill. From what I hear, Oscar came back to this town to get you and no one else. Frankly, the sooner he gets his business finished, the better.”

  The door slammed in Bill’s face.

  He felt like smashing his fist against the wood. Charlie Moon would risk his own safety and Tina’s because of his hatred of Bill. He looked up at the cliffs that rippled along the edge of Charlie’s land. The caves were clearly on Moon property, but if he climbed to the highest point on Heather’s land he might be able to get a glimpse of movement, maybe catch sight of Oscar’s vehicle if the man got careless.

  If that happened, there was nothing going to stop him from taking Oscar down, not Charlie, not the Feds, nobody. Gun fastened to his hip and a pair of binoculars on the seat next to him, Bill headed off to Heather’s.

  The thought of seeing her again lit a fire inside him.

  Remember, he told himself.

  Deal with Oscar and give her back her life.

  And keep her out of yours.

  A parade of Tribal Rangers and people Heather didn’t know came and went, driving on and off the property, keeping watch. She found herself looking for Bill, but she didn’t see him. Hours later as the late afternoon came, there was still no sign of him. What would she do if she did encounter Bill? Her own body betrayed her at the bridge. He had no doubt felt her longing clearly in her desperate embrace.

  She yearned with every pore to find him. And then what? To commit herself to Bill when he clearly didn’t want her? There might be a lingering sense of affection, or maybe even a remnant of love in his heart, but he would not open himself up to her again, and she didn’t blame him. For him, duty was all that was left.

  His duty to find Oscar.

  And then what? Heather wondered if he would find love again someday when the anger and hurt had eased. Or would he hold on to those bitter dregs without any hope in his heart?

  She closed her eyes and prayed for not just his safety, but his soul.

  Steering her mind to the practical, she made herself sit at the computer and type up a brief statement about the discovery of Mr. Brown’s body for her editor. It pained her to reduce the man’s death to a pitiful handful of words, but she had to keep that paycheck coming in. For some reason, the intense drive to resurrect her career seemed to be fading away the closer they came to Oscar’s deadline. She found she no longer cared as much about the big lab story and courting a connection with Dr. Egan.

  What was happening to her? To her goals and emotions?

  She laid her head on her arms and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she found her mother in the kitchen, laying out an assortment of utensils. Margot had kept to herself for most of the day, emerging only to ask one of the police officers to do an errand for her.

  Heather got to her feet and began to pace. “Is Dr. Egan okay? He looked pretty shaken up.”

  “Yes. He even managed to secure the soil and water samples and get them to his lab for testing.”

  “A true geologist.”

  “Exactly.” She took eggs from the fridge and cracked them into a bowl. “I’m not much of a cook, but I can scramble us some eggs for dinner.”

  Heather started in surprise. Was is dinnertime already? The hours had begun to fly by with frightening speed. Sunday was coming to a close and Oscar’s deadline would arrive on Tuesday.

  Margot looked up from her cooking. “What are you thinking about?”

  She blinked at her mother, grabbing some silverware and napkins to keep her hands busy. She thought about making something up, but the truth came out anyway. “About Oscar. He said Bill would die on Tuesday.”

  Margot poured the eggs into a pan and stirred them carefully. “Bill is a good man, from what I’ve seen.” She swirled the spatula. “Do you love him?”

  The question startled Heather so much, she dropped the fork she was setting on the table. “Love him?” Her cheeks flushed. “We … we had a relationship and I ruined it with my drinking. I ran away.”

  “Doesn’t seem like you burned the bridge completely, if you’ll excuse the metaphor. He is very concerned about you.”

  “It’s the cop in him.”

  “I don’t think that’s all of it. There’s something else there.”

  “His sister died of addiction. He doesn’t want to be with an alcoholic, recovering or otherwise.”

  Margot slid two plates onto the table and they sat. “Has he told you that?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then you are creating a theory based on insufficient evidence.”

  “Hold on,” Heather said, sudden anger rising along with the blood in her cheeks. “You have no right, no business telling me about relationships. You ran away, from me and from Dad.”

  She nodded. “Those are the facts, yes.”

  “Then how can you sit there and tell me Bill loves me? You don’t know anything about love.”

  She held up two fingers. “Not entirely true. Yes, I have ruined my relationship with you and your father, but there are two facts you have not accounted for. First, your father still loves me.”

  Heather gaped. The sheer nerve of the woman to believe it. “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do. I’m not saying I deserve it or that I earned it, because I didn’t, but the fact of the matter is he does still love me and I never really stopped loving him.”

  She had no right, no right at all to claim her husband’s love after what she’d done. Heather felt a desperate need to change the subject before she blew up. “Believe it if you want. What’s the second fact?”

  Margot stopped, sipped a glass of water and crimped the edges of her napkin. “It came to me when I saw you crawling across that bridge.”

  “What did?”

  “I’ve never really put much stock in God, Heather. I have always believed He was a myth created to help people feel better about their circumstances, a salve for the weak-minded.”

  Heather held her tongue, waiting for her mother to say what she needed to say.

  “But on that bridge, I had a strange thought. Standing there, watching you make your way along, knowing you might fall at any moment, I thought that if there was a God, how very hard it must be to watch His children make their way in the world, loving them so much, yet allowing them to go through perils to find their way to Him.”

  The kitchen grew quiet, the ticking of the clock the only sound. Heather sat in dumbfounded silence.

  “And I realized that …” Margot swallowed hard and cleared her throat. “I realized that I wanted more than anything in the world for you to cross that bridge safely for one very simple reason.”

  “Why?” Heather whispered.

  “Because I love you.”

  The words were soft, like a gentle rain, but they swept through Heather with the force of a tsunami. “You can’t love me. You ran from me because I ruined your life. I’m a punishment, the reason you lost everything that was important to you.”

  “Precisely proving my second point. I do love you, which is as much a surprise to me as you. There’s no rational reason why someone is compelled to love a person just because that being came out of their body, yet it is true. I love you, though I haven’t earned the right and you will likely never return that love.”

  Heather forced the words out. “How is that possible?”

  Margot gave her a lopsided grin. “I’m not sure. You are more the expert in these matters than I, but I think that you would probably say it’s because of God, wouldn’t you?”

  There was no way to make sense of the mad
rush of emotion that shook Heather. Her mother’s words had shocked her more than anything in her entire life. Her chest squeezed tight and she shot up from her chair. For a long moment her eyes were riveted on her mother’s face, then she walked to the back door mumbling something about getting some air.

  It was evening, the almost full moon painting everything silver. Choo Choo followed her outside and they sat together on the step.

  Because I love you.

  How she’d longed to hear it, obsessed about those words.

  Because I love you.

  But it wasn’t the way it should be, coming from a distant mother who’d let her down so hard her heart was cracked forever. Tears streamed down her face and Choo Choo pressed his chin on her lap. She hardly heard the sound of the truck until it had almost rumbled by along the dirt trail.

  Bill stopped when he saw her there. She didn’t think, only went to him and got into the truck, Choo Choo settling into her lap after a brief greeting to Tank in the back.

  He didn’t say anything but sat scrutinizing her face in the moonlight. Then he began to drive slowly along the trail and she knew he was giving her the time to pull herself together before they spoke.

  She wondered as she watched him drive, his face impassive as always, how he kept his real feelings tucked inside, buried deep down like the sparkling crystals inside a rough geode. She tried several deep breaths before she spoke. “Out for a drive?”

  He nodded. “Spent a couple hours spying on Charlie Moon’s property. Thought Oscar might be there.”

  “Can the police search?”

  Bill grimaced. “Charlie won’t allow it and the Feds don’t think there’s enough evidence to procure a search warrant.” He looked suddenly tired. “Might be clutching at straws anyway.”

  Heather watched a bat dart gracefully through the sky. “My mother loves me,” she blurted out.

  He stayed silent for a moment. “And that’s what you’ve always wanted to hear.”

  “Yes, so why don’t I feel elated? Fulfilled? Why does it make an ache so deep inside that I think I’m losing my mind?”

  He stopped the truck and parked before he turned to face her, taking her hand. “I’m sorry it wasn’t what you wanted it to be.”