The doors of that car flew open.
“Police. Freeze!” Danielle Settler’s voice rang through the sand pit.
“Help! Please!” Remmi cried, yanking open the driver’s door of the Subaru to see the horror within.
Brett Hedges was pinned to the passenger seat, twisted metal and glass surrounding him; the chain on the pair of handcuffs had cut deep into his neck. His head was lopped over, and his eyes were glassy.
Dead. He had to be dead.
And Noah’s hands were on either side of the headrest. “Noah,” she whispered. “Oh, God, Noah.” She reached into her pocket, found the key she’d stolen from Hedges when she’d pretended to trip in the parking lot, and unlocked the handcuffs. They opened, Noah fell back, and a horrid sucking sound escaped from Brett Hedges before he slid to one side.
“You had those?” Noah asked. “Why the hell didn’t you use them sooner?” And then he fell back, and she noticed the red stain growing on his shoulder.
“Out of the way!” Settler ordered. “God, I could have shot you!” she yelled at Remmi as Martinez took charge. Remmi heard sirens. Far away, across the desert, but drawing nearer. “Backup and an ambulance are on the way,” Settler added.
“Too late for Hedges,” Martinez said. “He’s gone.”
“What about Scott?”
“Don’t know. Doesn’t look good.”
“He has to be all right,” Remmi said, shell-shocked. She couldn’t lose him. Not now. Not after finding him after all these years. “He has to be all right.”
“We’ll do our best,” Settler said as the next set of lights appeared over the rise, and Remmi thought she distinguished the bleat of an ambulance far away. Too far away.
“I love him,” she whispered as the clouds of dust began to settle.
“Then you just keep loving him. And if he makes it,” Settler said, “tell him.”
“I will,” she vowed—and only hoped she would get the chance.
* * *
Hours later, after he’d had surgery to repair the torn muscles of his shoulder and some stitches for the cuts he’d sustained when the window had shattered, Noah was taken to a private room.
Remmi had given her formal statement to the police and was waiting for him to wake up. Then she made good on her promise.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” she said as he woke up.
“What?” He still looked bad, his face bruised, a cut over one eye. And he didn’t seem the least bit surprised by what she’d told him.
“It’s twenty minutes after midnight. Thanksgiving.”
“Oh . . . yeah . . . I hadn’t given it a thought.”
“Me neither. Guess we had a lot on our minds.” She grabbed his hand and twined her fingers with his. “I have something to say.” Gathering her courage, she said, “I love you, Noah Scott.”
He squinted at her a long moment, and her courage nosedived. Too soon . . . she shouldn’t have said it!
But then he drawled, “Is that so?”
She nearly gasped with relief. “Yes.”
One side of his mouth curved beneath the stubble that covered his jaw.
In for a penny, in for a pound . . . “You know, usually when someone says ‘I love you,’ there’s an equal response, and it’s a lot better than ‘Is that so?’”
“I guess you’re right.” For a person who was lying in a hospital bed, he showed incredible strength in tightening his fingers and pulling her close, so that her face was mere inches away. “Let’s do this.”
“What? How?”
“By climbing into this bed with me and showing me just how much you love me.”
At that moment, outside his door, a nurse wheeled a cart.
“You’re crazy,” Remmi told him.
“Maybe. Come on . . .”
Still close enough to feel his breath upon her face, she narrowed her eyes and said, “I thought you were different from the boy I met all those years ago, but I was wrong. You’re still as incorrigible as ever.”
“Incorrigible. Love that word.”
She laughed.
He gave another tug on her hand, dragging her even closer, so he could brush his lips over hers. “By the way,” he said, “I love you, too. And as soon as I get out of here, I’m going to prove it to you.”
“Promises, promises.”
“You bet.” He got serious then. “Enough for a lifetime.”
“A lifetime? That must be the anesthesia talking.” But she saw in his eyes that he meant what he’d said.
“We’ll see.” His eyes sparkled, and he inclined his chin toward the window. “We’re in Vegas. It’s pretty easy to get hitched here.”
“Now I know you’re still under the influence.”
“Think about it. We’re not getting any younger, and we’ve waited a long time.”
Was he serious? He couldn’t be. Could he . . . ? “Okay . . . I will . . . think on it,” she said cautiously.
“Think hard,” he suggested as she pulled away and started for the door. “Think real hard.”
She did, for the next three days, while she waited for him to be released. She thought about it a lot. It was a crazy idea, but she asked herself what was she waiting for? And what about her life wasn’t a little off the rails?
She rented a car as what was left of the totaled Subaru was with the police. Though she tried repeatedly, her brother and sister refused to see her. As it turned out, they blamed her for the death of their biological father, Brett. Someday, when enough time had passed, maybe, they would sort everything out and want to reconnect. She hoped. She had left word with their attorney. They knew she existed; they could come to her. She wasn’t holding out hope.
Shawna, aka Seneca, too, refused to speak to her.
Not a surprise, since in Remmi’s statement to the police she repeated what Brett Hedges had told her, so Shawna might end up in jail, along with her husband, for killing OH2.
Or maybe not.
They could afford expensive criminal lawyers, and OH2’s body couldn’t be exhumed, as he’d been cremated. The only other person who had known the truth, Brett Hedges, too, was dead. She thought about that and how he’d saved Ariel from dying in the desert when the Mustang had gone up in flames. Somehow he’d helped his daughter survive. What had seemed certain death, which had been part of his plan, even though he’d expected to be saving his son. It had been a dangerous, near-fatal plan and a miracle that Ariel had lived. Maybe Brett hadn’t been completely evil.
Then again . . .
She’d thought about that night a lot and was putting it behind her. She’d also considered Noah’s proposal for three days, and when he’d recovered and was finally released from the hospital and ensconced in the passenger seat of the rented Ford Escape, she said, “Okay, I’ve thought.”
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “And?”
“And there’s a little drive-through chapel in Las Vegas that would be perfect.”
He grinned. “You’re taking me there now? Right out of the hospital?”
“No way.” Sliding her sunglasses onto her nose, she said, “Greta would kill me if she wasn’t invited. Tell ya what. If you move your business to San Francisco, and we rent the upper two floors from Greta, and you work with Emma via FaceTime, or she moves up to the city, too, and things work out, then we’ll come back to that chapel. Maybe on Valentine’s Day.”
She started the car, and as the wintry Nevada sun bore down on them, she slid a glance his way. “What do you say?”
“I’m in.” He grabbed her knee. “But let’s not wait that long. How about Christmas instead? I mean even though it’s over a month away, people are already celebrating, have been for a couple of weeks. It feels right, don’t you think?”
Catching the freeway that would eventually take them home, she decided she had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Grinning, she said, “Looks like you and I are destined for a happy holiday.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes!”
And they both broke into laughter as she hit the gas.
Lisa Jackson, Liar, Liar
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