Page 17

SEVENTEEN

After a trip to the ER to confirm that her head wasn’t permanently damaged, Meredith spent Monday night into Tuesday morning in her childhood bed so her mom could check on her every few hours. She’d forgotten how uncomfortable it was to sleep in a twin-size bed and insisted on going home on Tuesday.

She slept better in her own bed but woke up on Wednesday morning with a raging headache, a body that hurt everywhere, and a deep sense of dread.

Sounds from the kitchen told her that Mo was in her house, making her breakfast. “Mo?”

“Yo,” he called back.

“Go home.”

“You want eggs? Or oatmeal?”

She rolled over and bit back a scream.

“Smoothies for everybody.” Mo sounded way too cheery.

“Everybody?”

“Morning, Mer.” Cal’s voice floated up the stairs.

She eased from her bed and down the stairs. The two men in her kitchen watched her with unconcealed protectiveness. If Mo was a boiling cauldron of anger, Cal was a swarm of hornets. Both of them kept their emotions in check when they were with her, but she knew them too well. They were primed and ready for battle. The slightest hint of danger would set them off.

“How’s the head?” Cal asked.

She ignored him and walked into her bathroom. She took care of business and then looked in the mirror while the whirring of the blender drowned out the sound of her dismayed whimper. The scrapes were a little better. The bruising was worse. She’d have to text Bronwyn later this morning and see how she was doing. At least Bronwyn had had the good sense to keep her head from the pavement. But her knees and elbows were probably several times their normal size by now.

She walked into her kitchen, went straight to her medicine cabinet, and grabbed some pain reliever. Mo shoved a smoothie in her direction, and she took it. “Thank you.” She swallowed the pills and squeezed in between her brother and her cousin. “Good morning.”

The arms that came around her were gentle.

She took a sip of her smoothie and bumped her head against Cal’s shoulder, wincing at the jolt of pain. “I know why Mo is here. Why are you here?” When he didn’t respond with a pithy comment, anxiety licked through her veins. “What is it?”

“Gray called this morning.”

Meredith didn’t want to think about Gray. The look on his face as she climbed into Mo’s Jeep Monday night kept popping into her brain. He didn’t have any right to look at her like that. He didn’t want her. He didn’t choose her. He didn’t get to hold her hand. He didn’t get to make her feel safe.

“He got a hit on the truck that tried to run you down. It was stolen from Tennessee three days ago.”

“Are we surprised by that?” Meredith took another sip. Mo really did make fabulous smoothies. “You have to be a special kind of moron to try to run someone down in your own vehicle.”

Meredith walked around her small counter and settled into a seat at the kitchen table. Tiny house living was awesome for one person. Maybe two. But three, especially when two of the three were men in a bad mood? Things were a little cramped in that situation.

Cal joined her at the table. “Not sure if you’ve noticed, but most criminals are all Sheetrock and no studs.”

Mo laughed. “I prefer to say their cornbread’s not done in the middle.”

“Papa says they’re as smart as bait.” Meredith grimaced.

“Yeah. Pretty sure that’s what happened in this case.” Cal reached for her hand and squeezed it. “The bait didn’t survive.”

Meredith looked from Cal to Mo.

Mo leaned against the counter. “Gray confirmed that the truck was stolen. No real surprise there. But he got a call late last night from a deputy with Buncombe County. They found the truck. Two dead bodies inside.”

A shiver rocked through Meredith. “How did they die?”

“Hard to say,” Mo answered. “The interior of the truck went up in flames. Isolated area. No identification on the bodies yet. But they got a partial match on the tag and general body style. Then, they found a VIN that hadn’t been destroyed in the fire. The fire happened late Monday night or early the next morning. They investigated when someone noticed the smoke on their way to work Tuesday.”

“Obviously, there’s no proof yet. But it’s a good bet that the two bodies were the assailants. They failed. They died for it.” Cal’s expression was grim.

“My guess is they were going to die anyway.” Mo frowned down at the table. “Success or failure. It didn’t matter. They had to go.”

“Who are these people?” Meredith had no appetite but forced herself to keep drinking her breakfast.

“These are the people who are coming after you.” Mo had no give in his voice.

“I hate to say this, but has it occurred to you that maybe I wasn’t the target? Maybe they weren’t coming after me at all? Bronwyn’s family is ... some of them are okay, but they aren’t always rational.”

“Oh, believe me. The thought has more than crossed my mind. The bottom line is that we don’t know and we may never know. So you both have to be on guard until we resolve the situation in Neeson once and for all.” Mo ran a hand over his scruff. “I can’t see a scenario where you’re in danger from anyone other than the Neeson crowd. The Pierces have no bone to pick with you. So when Neeson is dealt with, that gets you off the hot seat. I’m not so sure it will get Bronwyn in the clear.”

Cal nodded in agreement. “Her family is messed up. And this whole mess with Steven being in jail. I don’t understand it, but I know there’s drama there.”

“She’s tough,” Meredith reminded both men. “She survived her board meeting last month, and she’ll survive whatever they throw at her now.”

Mo didn’t comment, but the white-knuckled grip on his cup spoke volumes.

Cal’s phone rang, and he answered with a clipped, “Shaw.”

Meredith didn’t need to put him on speakerphone to hear Gray’s voice. “Cal, I need to interview Meredith and Bronwyn today.”

“So why are you calling me?”

Meredith pressed her leg against Cal’s, and when he looked at her she mouthed, “Be nice.”

She didn’t want to be nice to Gray herself, but she didn’t want to mess up Cal’s friendship with Gray either.

“You know why I’m calling you.” Gray sounded ... tired? Frustrated? Lost? “Look, do you think she’s up for it or not?”

“It just so happens, I’m sitting right beside Meredith. Hang on.” Cal didn’t mute the phone or cover the speaker or anything. “Meredith, Gray needs to interview you today. Are you up for it?”

She glared at him. “After lunch. Yes. I’ll come to the station.”

Cal put the phone back to his ear. “You heard that?”

“I hate you.” Gray didn’t sound lost anymore. He sounded furious.

“Too bad.” Cal looked at Meredith again. “You want to call Beep?”

She nodded.

“She’ll probably have Bronwyn with her.”

“Thanks for nothing.”

“Anytime.”

The call disconnected.

“What was that about?” Meredith pressed a finger into Cal’s arm. “Why did you do that?”

“He’s too chicken to call you himself, so he called me and put me in the middle of the two of you when he knows full well that I’m trying very hard not to be in the middle. So he can deal with it.”

Mo’s low chuckle had an ominous edge to it. “Remind me never to make you mad, brother.”

“Oh, you’re next on my list, so buckle up.” Cal stood and took his glass to the sink. “I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with men who don’t have the sense to see the beauty that’s right in front of them.”

Meredith watched Mo and Cal face off.

“And yeah, Mo, I’m talking about you too.”

“You think you’re some kind of macho-man cupid or something?” Disbelief tinged Mo’s question.

“No. I think I love you guys too much to let you keep being stupid.” He kissed Meredith on the head, grabbed his coat from the sofa, and paused at the door. “I do, you know. I love you both.” He slammed the door behind him.

“Didn’t see that coming.” Meredith waved a hand to where, on the other side of the window, Cal strode to his truck.

“Me neither.” Mo took his own cup and rinsed it in the kitchen sink. “I gotta get to work.”

“Yeah. You do that. I’ll call Bronwyn.”

“Don’t leave without letting me know.” Mo followed Cal’s path out the door but turned to his own house a few yards away.

Meredith was left alone at her tiny table with an empty glass and a heart that didn’t know if she should be grateful to be so loved or angry that the people she loved most were all mad at each other in large part because of her.

She called Bronwyn, made plans to meet at Gray’s after lunch, and got ready for the day.

Gray was not ready for the way his heart dropped when he looked up to see Meredith and Bronwyn standing in his office door at 1:00 on the dot. Bronwyn’s taped wrist made him want to throw a stapler at the wall. Meredith’s bruised face made him want to rampage through the streets of Neeson until he found the men responsible.

There were two dead men in a truck, and they might be the ones who committed the act, but they weren’t the ones behind it.

He stood and waved them in. “Please come in. Have a seat. Would you like some water? Coffee?”

Both women said no.

He sat down behind his desk and tried to scrape together his last ounce of professionalism. “I don’t want to make any assumptions. I know we talked Monday night, but it would help me if you could go over what happened again.”

They nodded, and Bronwyn spoke up first. “We’ve known Judy forever. Went to school with her. When I left town, she and Meredith did a lot of stuff together for a little while.”

Meredith and Bronwyn shared a look, and Bronwyn continued. “Okay, it wasn’t long. Judy started dating Jason in the middle of junior year and that was that. But we’ve all stayed friends. So when she said she wanted to have music bingo night, we told her we’d do all we could to support it.”

Meredith nodded but didn’t contribute. Bronwyn continued. “I told the staff at The Haven. Meredith had signs at the office. We mentioned it to everybody we saw. Invited them to come out. Told them we’d be there with bells on.”

This wasn’t something he’d known before. “So the fact that you were going to be at Mountain Brew on Monday night was common knowledge?”

“Anyone who was making any kind of effort to know our plans wouldn’t have had any difficulty finding out where we’d be. We posted a selfie with Judy before things got rolling and reminded people of where we were.”

Meredith cleared her throat. “I think we even said we’d be staying to the end and that it wasn’t too late to come out and join us.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Bronwyn shrugged. “In hindsight, that seems like a dumb thing to do, but I don’t think either of us could have predicted that someone would try to run us over.”

Meredith nodded. “It doesn’t make any sense. How could they have predicted it well enough to have someone shove us in the road and try to run over us? That seems too coincidental.”

Gray wished he could agree with them. He tapped his pen on the planner on his desk. “I get what you’re saying.” He focused on looking at both women, even though every time he looked at Meredith a nasty rage roiled through him and then was followed by an almost overwhelming compulsion to pull her onto his lap and hold her and tell her he would never let anyone hurt her ever again.

“I need to ask you something, and I need you to try to keep an open mind.”

Both women gave him wary nods.

“How well do you know Judy?”

“We went to school with her.” Bronwyn turned to Meredith and Meredith nodded. “We’ve known her forever.”

“Would she have any reason to want to see you harmed? Or any reason to be willing to share your location with—”

“You think Judy set us up for this?” Meredith’s disbelief rang through her question. “No way.”

“I’m just aski—”

“What motivation would she have?” Bronwyn frowned. “There’s no reason for her to come after us.”

“Ladies, I’m not saying there is. I’m doing my job. Asking tough questions. I don’t know Judy well, and the way you described her keeping you around until the very end ...”

“It wasn’t Judy.” Meredith’s voice was firm.

“I agree.” Bronwyn gave him a stern look. “You’d have to have ironclad proof before I’d believe it.”

“Look, I’m not saying it was, but you need to understand that these people who came after you didn’t get a harebrained idea and run with it. Unfortunately, there’ve been a couple of incidents in Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina that could be related to what happened to you.”

“What?” Meredith’s gasp was so full of worry and shock that he had to force himself to continue.

“I have some contacts who’ve been very helpful. When I told them what happened on Monday, they put it through some kind of computer program that looks for patterns. I don’t know how it works exactly, but it generated a few leads. They forwarded the results to me, and one pattern stands out.”

He stood and walked over to the board he had on the interior wall of his office. “There are five cases. In each one there were two assailants believed to be working together. In three of the five events, the individuals involved”—Gray made it a point not to use the word victims —“were shoved into traffic. There were three fatalities, two serious injuries, and one case where the man rolled to the other side of the road and suffered nothing more than a few scrapes.”

“And seeing his life flash before his eyes,” Meredith whispered to Bronwyn, who nodded her agreement.

“I’m sure that’s true,” Gray said. “In those cases, a large vehicle, which was later confirmed to be stolen, raced along in the aftermath. It didn’t hit the people in the street but flew past and picked up the perpetrator. The vehicles were later found abandoned. In one case, the vehicle did hit the victims. That’s the one where there were two fatalities. Clear case of hit-and-run, but it was a small town with few cameras. They didn’t catch the event. Witnesses told them what happened and that they caught a glimpse of a large vehicle speeding away. Didn’t see the plates. It’s assumed that the driver picked up the man who did the shoving and took off.”

“So these people have worked this out and done it before? Multiple times?” Meredith asked.

“Yes.”

“What happened in the fifth incident?”

He didn’t want to answer Meredith, but he had no choice. “In that incident, there were two individuals standing outside on the street. They climbed into their cars. Once one had pulled away, a large truck followed them and ran them off the road. The other person hadn’t gotten out of the parking spot yet when an individual in a ski mask opened their car door, knocked them out with the gun, shoved them into the back seat, and drove off.”

Bronwyn and Meredith both stared at him now, eyes wide.

“The woman was assaulted and left in her car. The police found her later that night about fifteen miles away.”

Fear had a scent. A taste. And the air in his office was full of it. He didn’t have to spell it out for them. They understood. He could see it in their eyes, and in the way they now clutched each other’s hands.

“They have DNA from the victim. The Buncombe County officers know and will be running DNA on the two men in the truck to see if they match.”

Meredith’s eyes were wet. Bronwyn had tears streaming down her face. He rose and handed each of them a tissue before returning to his seat. “I’m sorry. I promise my goal in this is not to frighten you but to protect you.”

Meredith spoke first. “You think whoever came after me, bugged me, and tracked me hired these men to ... what? Kill me? Abduct me?”

Gray had no way to soften the blow. “Yes. We think the plan was hit-and-run. But if they couldn’t make that work, they’d go for plan B. The task force has started running searches to see if they can find any other hits that match the profile.”

“What do we do now?” Bronwyn blew her nose.

Meredith looked at her and said, “I’m so sorry, Beep. I didn’t mean—”

“Hush. It could have been you or me. They have reason to get rid of both of us and you know it. It doesn’t really matter who the main target was. We have to be careful.” Bronwyn turned to Gray. “Right?”

“One hundred percent.”

“I still don’t think Judy was involved.” Meredith shuddered. “No way.”

“I never said she was.” Gray hated what he was doing to Meredith and Bronwyn, but he didn’t have a choice. “But you need to use caution with everyone. Even your friends.”

Ten minutes later, Gray watched Meredith and Bronwyn leave, followed by the two officers who’d been assigned to shadow them. He should turn the case over to someone else. Donovan would do a good job. Brick would as well.

But no one would care as much as he did.

He’d been an idiot. And he might have to live with his stupidity for the rest of his life. But if anything happened to Meredith?

Lord, I’m gonna need some help here. It wasn’t healthy to feel this level of panic about a woman. Although, if he gave himself a little bit of permission to be human, a certain level of terror was normal when someone you loved was in danger.

Because despite his best efforts, he’d fallen hard for Meredith Quinn. He couldn’t ignore the facts. But that didn’t mean he could pursue her. If anything, it meant he should try to stay away from her.

Although, that wasn’t going to happen. He cared too much to do anything less than everything possible to keep her alive and healthy.

And when this mess was over, he’d step back—way back. She would find someone else.

The very idea of another man touching her made his chest burn. The idea that she would give her heart to someone else?

It would be torture to watch.

There weren’t that many eligible men for her in Gossamer Falls, though. She was related to half the town.

Maybe he wouldn’t have to watch her fall in love and get married after all. No. That didn’t make him happy either. He wanted her to have everything she wanted and more.

But she wants you. Or, she did. Until you messed it up.

Seriously, Lord. Why did you bring her into my life? I was happy on my own.

No. He hadn’t been. But he’d thought he was. Now he knew it’d been a lie.

He took some time to pray for direction and wisdom and peace and hope. And when he was done, he got to work.