The Russell Twins

This creak was closer. On the stairs, or in the hall. Faith went rigid. There was another whisper of sound—something brushing the wall, perhaps.

Her pulse raced and her blood seemed to roar in her ears. Was it Rory? How had he gotten into the house without her hearing glass break? The front and back doors both had dead-bolt locks now.

One hand crept for the cell phone on her bedside table. Before she could touch it, her eyes made out the deeper shadow within the dark rectangle that was the doorway.

It was too late for the phone. Faith eased her hand back, then shoved it beneath the pillow beside her and found the hard, textured grip of the gun.

I’m not ready for this.

She heard breathing now. Her own, but someone else’s, too. He had stepped inside the bedroom, almost—but not quite—soundlessly. Not Daddy, no thump or scrape of crutches. The shape took form in moonlight. He was only a few steps from her bed.

Something snapped in Faith, and with a scream of terror and rage she lunged for the lamp switch even as she lifted the gun.

In the flood of light, he threw himself forward, his face contorted and a deadly knife lifted to stab.

Faith went cold. As if she were outside her body, she saw her second hand come up to brace the first, her thumb folding just as it ought to.

Rory was almost on top of her when she squeezed the trigger.

CHAPTER THREE

THE RING OF THE PHONE WOKE Ben with all the subtlety of a bucket of cold water dumped over his head. Cursing, he groped on his bedside table for the damn phone.

“Wheeler,” he growled into it.

“Chief, this is Ron Meagher.” One of his young officers, greener than baby peas fresh from the pod. “You said to let you know, day or night, if anything comes in about the Russells.”

“Yes.” He stifled an obscenity and swung his legs to the floor, then turned on the lamp, blinking painfully in the flood of light. “What’s happened?”

“We just had a call from Faith Russell. She says she shot her ex-husband.”

Damn it, damn it, damn it. Ben grabbed the jeans he’d left draped over a chair and yanked them on.

“Is he dead?”

“She seemed to think so. Dispatch said she sounded real cool.”

Cool? Faith? Maybe, but beneath the surface she would be dissolving.

“I’m on my way.” He dropped the phone and tugged yesterday’s T-shirt over his head. Not bothering with socks, he shoved his feet into athletic shoes. Weapon at the small of his back, he snatched his wallet and keys up, then was out the door at a run.

He drove faster than was legal, faster than was safe. The moon was high and silver now, an improvement over the sickly yellow it had been earlier, hanging on the horizon.

Don’t let the son of a bitch be dead, he prayed, with scant hope any prayer from him would be answered. He and God weren’t on cordial terms. He tried anyway. Faith can’t handle it. Shouldn’t have to handle it. Don’t let him be dead.

He didn’t pass a single car on the city streets or the highway. Long before he reached the farm, he saw the multicolored, rotating lights of police cars and ambulance.

He tore into the farmyard, heedless of potholes, and came to a skidding stop behind Faith’s SUV. The scene was nightmarishly similar to the other time he’d been called out here in the middle of the night, when Charlotte had been battered and slashed.

Please, not Faith, he thought. She was so fragile. Strong, too—more than he’d credited her with on first meeting. But gentle, not made for what she’d suffered.

If she’d really killed Rory Hardesty, that would be much worse for her than being hurt would have been.

Burgess was in the kitchen, along with two EMTs.

“Dead?” Ben asked, and got nods all around.

Burgess kept talking. Ben didn’t hear. He walked straight through the dining room to the living room, where he heard voices.

Faith was there, sitting on the sofa beside her father. Meagher, looking about eighteen in his blue uniform, had just asked if she had a license for her gun.

“Yes,” Ben said hoarsely. “She has a license.”

She looked up at him, but not as if she were glad to see him. Not as if she felt anything at all. He had seen eyes like that, too often in his years in law enforcement. Utterly and completely empty, as if tonight she had lost her soul. He wanted nothing so much as to sit down and cradle her in his arms, but he had a feeling that if he did he’d be holding a mannequin, not a living breathing woman.

Her father was watching her, his face drawn. He wasn’t touching her, and Ben suspected she’d rejected his embrace. She sat with her back straight, her hands quiet on her lap, as if she were a guest not quite comfortable in this home but determined to hide it.

Brushing by his young officer, Ben laid his hand against her cheek, marble cool, and took an icy hand in his. He felt his lips pull back in a snarl. “She’s in shock, damn it! Meagher, get her a cup of tea or cocoa or something hot. Now.” He turned and, not seeing an afghan, wrenched the comforter from the hospital bed. Her father reached for it and helped him settle it around her shoulders.

“I told you I’m all right,” Faith said, words belied immediately when a shiver rattled her body.

“Sure you are,” Ben said. He decided he didn’t give a damn how stiff she would be in his embrace. He sat next to her and lifted her onto his lap, tucking the comforter around her.

She began to fight him.

“Don’t,” he said, and tightened his arms.

She struggled for another minute, then subsided when he simply held her close. She shivered again, and her teeth began to chatter. Her father looked on helplessly.

What the hell was Meagher doing? Ben wondered in raw fury. How long did it take to heat water in the microwave?

Waiting, Ben pressed her face into his shoulder and pressed his cheek to her hair. It was damp, he realized, and when he groped under the comforter for her braid he found it to be wet. That wasn’t helping. Cheek against the top of her head, he murmured, “I’m sorry, Faith. God, so sorry. You shouldn’t have had to face this. I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

She didn’t say anything, only kept trembling against him, her nose buried in his throat as if she couldn’t resist seeking the warmth of his skin.

Ben looked at her father. “Has anyone called Charlotte?”

He started. “No. I’ll, uh, do that. I was too worried about Faith….”

Who probably needed her sister more than anyone else in the world. At any other time, Ben might not have liked knowing that, even though he had been very careful to avoid offering himself up as her rock. But right now, all he wanted was to give Faith whatever she needed.

Don Russell levered himself to his feet and, with the help of the single crutch that was within arm’s reach, shuffled over to the bedside stand where his phone sat.

Ben could hear his side of the conversation, punctuated with pauses.

“Gray? It’s Don. Hardesty got in the house tonight. No, don’t know. Faith shot him. She’s …” His sidelong survey of his daughter was uneasy. “If Char can come … Okay. Thanks.”

He ended the call and met Ben’s eyes. “They’re on their way,” he said, unnecessarily. Despite a tension between the sisters that Ben had never understood, he sensed that either of them would have gone to Siberia or the Congo or, hell, Timbuktu, for the other without any hesitation. He, who had been essentially alone all of his life, even during his brief marriage, wondered what it would feel like to have someone love you like that.

It was unlikely he’d find out, and seemed even more so with his fortieth birthday looming up ahead.

His body heat seemed to be helping her. Faith’s shivers came less often and she was warming up, nose, hands, cheeks. Meagher finally showed up with a mug of cocoa, flushing when he encountered his boss’s glower.

Ben shifted Faith, bundled like a mummy in the comforter, to the sofa beside him and helped her grasp the mug. She sipped, and let out a sigh of relief as the hot liquid reached places he couldn’t.

Ben stayed where he was, keeping her against his side and reminding her to drink, until a commotion at the back door announced the arrival of Char and Gray. Only then did he murmur in Faith’s ear, “Your sister’s here,” and stand up.

She looked at him for a moment, as if she couldn’t help herself. Her eyes were no longer blank, but rather filled with so much emotion, such horror, he almost wished he hadn’t stirred her to life again.

Involuntarily he reached out, but the movement was abortive because Char flung herself across the living room and enveloped her sister in her arms.

“Faith. Oh, God. Faith, honey.”

Ben backed away, leaving them to it. He had to do his job. He just wished his chest wasn’t so tight with anguish that every breath he drew hurt.

Turning to face Gray didn’t help.

Like Ben, Gray Van Dusen was a tall man, over six feet and broad-shouldered. A few years younger—maybe thirty-four, thirty-five—Gray had brown hair streaked lighter by the sun, a pair of level gray eyes and an easy, relaxed style that could morph into hard-ass in an instant. Right now, his pitying gaze shifted from his fiancée’s sister and went cold and hard when he looked at Ben.

“What the hell happened?”

“I don’t know yet. When I got here, Faith was in shock. I didn’t want to leave her until Charlotte could take over.”

After a moment, Gray nodded in concession. Faith was more important to him, too, than any investigation.

“I’ve got to get on with it,” Ben said abruptly to the room, and walked past Gray as if he weren’t there.

In the kitchen, he determined that Meagher had, astonishingly enough, called for a crime-scene crew—borrowed from the county as the small city of West Fork didn’t have much need for one of their own—and the medical examiner. Both were en route, the young officer reported.

Ben nodded and, reluctantly, started upstairs.

Before he’d taken over, West Fork police would have turned the case over to the sheriff’s department because they had no officers experienced in homicide investigation. He might yet have to do that, if there seemed to be any doubt about tonight’s events—he knew he was emotionally involved, whether he liked to admit it or not. If it turned out the dead man wasn’t Hardesty, or Hardesty hadn’t been carrying a weapon, things could get messy.

A couple of the steps creaked under his weight. Had Faith’s ex spent enough time at the house to know to avoid them? Or were those faint sounds what had woken her?

In the hall at the top of the stairs, the first room on the right was Don Russell’s. Unsurprisingly, it had an air of disuse. On the left was Charlotte’s, where Ben had talked to her when she was recuperating from Hardesty’s last assault. Bathroom beyond, also on the left. And finally, Faith’s bedroom.

The door was wide open. The overhead light wasn’t on, but the bedside lamp was. Had Faith turned it on? If it was Meagher, if the idiot had done a thing in here but verify Hardesty was dead, Ben would string him up by his thumbs.

Ben pulled on the latex gloves he carried in his glove compartment, but didn’t have to touch either knob or door.

The body lay sprawled beside the bed. In fact, the dead man had been so damn close to the bed when the bullet—bullets?—struck, he’d slid down the side of it, fountaining blood on the quilt. Shit, Ben thought; from the quantity of blood, she’d likely gotten him right in the heart.

He pictured her at the range, taking methodical shot after shot, never flinching, her hands steady. Had she been envisioning this moment when she pulled the trigger? Seen her ex-husband in the white paper target?

Reality, Ben had long since learned, was one hell of a lot more brutal than anything the imagination could conjure.

He eased into the room with a sideways step to avoid walking where the intruder had. Sticking to the perimeter, he circled to a position near the foot of the bed and squatted on his haunches so he could see the face.

Rory Hardesty, Ben saw with relief. No mistake there, except on Hardesty’s part. He’d misjudged Faith, bigtime.

At first Ben couldn’t see any weapon, which worried him. Not to say Faith hadn’t had reason to shoot the bastard; he’d hurt her badly enough with his bare hands before, and it was well-documented. But this would be cleaner if he’d carried a gun or.

Ah. The knife had fallen out of his hand and lay in the shadow just under the bed. It was an ugly one with a thick black rubber grip, designed for the military or hunters, if Ben was any judge. The blade was at least eight inches long. He was willing to bet it would turn out to be the same knife Hardesty had used on Charlotte.

Oh, yeah. This one was open-and-shut, but he knew that wouldn’t make it any easier for Faith to live with what she’d done tonight.

He retreated as carefully as he’d entered the room. Now, how the hell had the son of a bitch gotten in? The easiest way would have been to knock out a pane of glass on the back door and reach in to unlock the new dead bolt, but he hadn’t done that. He clearly hadn’t made enough noise to wake either Don or Faith until he was upstairs and so close that in another few seconds Faith could have died.

Ben swore under his breath, pausing at the top of the stairs to get a grip on himself. He couldn’t let anyone see him falling apart at the idea of that knife descending toward Faith Russell’s breast. Or her throat.

Or—God—would Hardesty have wanted to carve up her face to punish her?

He actually shuddered and wanted to go back and kill the bastard all over again. He wished he’d done it in the first place. He could handle killing in a way he was terribly afraid Faith wouldn’t be able to. Especially not when the man she’d shot was someone she’d once loved.

Finally confident he could hide everything he felt, Ben went downstairs where both his officers waited with thinly disguised anxiety.

“Have you looked for the point of entry?” he asked.

Both heads bobbed. Burgess and Meagher exchanged a glance. Jason Burgess, who’d been a cop for two whole years, was the one to answer. “Yes, sir. The laundry room, sir.”

The door was behind the stairs. The window above the washer and dryer was missing its glass. The frame wasn’t large; it would have been a squeeze, but doable. This might have been the only room in the house with a closed door, which would have helped make the entry quiet. Also, Ben determined by prowling, the staircase and a storage space beneath it that was packed with boxes lay between the laundry room and the living room where Don had been sleeping. The pile of boxes would have offered dandy sound insulation.

He went outside, fetched a flashlight from his car and circled the house, where he found a painter’s stepladder under the window. The glass had been removed almost whole and leaned carefully against the house. Cut, presumably, although he didn’t see a tool.

He wondered if Hardesty had intended to reclaim the ladder once he was done inside and drive away to start his life anew, freed of his vicious compulsion once Faith was dead. Or would he have sat down on the side of the bed and called 911 himself, then waited for the arrival of the police as domestic abusers who killed sometimes did? Unless he proved to be carrying a handgun, too, which Ben wouldn’t know until the medical examiner was done with the body and photographs had been taken, Ben doubted Hardesty had intended to commit suicide, another popular option. Stabbing yourself would be a lot harder to do than pulling a trigger.

Satisfied with this first survey, Ben walked back around the house to find all his guests had arrived. He showed the medical examiner upstairs, and encouraged the crime-scene techs to start outside with the ladder and cut window, then returned to the living room. He hoped Faith was up to talking to him now.

Don was back in his hospital bed, the sheet and a thin blanket over him. On the sofa, Charlotte sat beside Faith, holding her hand. Gray stood with his back to the window, watching the two women. They all looked at Ben when he walked in.

“He got in through the laundry room,” he told them. “Took out the window glass neat enough, I’m betting he used a cutter. He either found a stepladder in one of the outbuildings or brought his own. It’s still standing under the window.”

“We have one,” Don said. “It’s damn near as old as the girls. Getting pretty rickety. Wood, with lots of paint splatters.”

Ben shook his head. “This one’s wood, but newish. Maybe he picked it up at his mom’s house.”

“Oh, no,” Faith breathed. “Has anyone told his mother yet? “

Trust her to worry about someone else.

“No,” he said. “I’ll do that eventually. The medical examiner is here right now, and the photographer is taking pictures. It’s going to be a few hours before we can move the body out of here.”

Faith seemed to shrink. Ben felt cruel, but had no choice but to keep on being cruel.

“I need to ask you some questions,” he said.

She swallowed and raised her gaze to his. “Your, um, officer tried earlier, but I …” She closed her eyes briefly.

“I couldn’t.”

“I understand.” He tried to make his deep, rough voice as gentle as possible. “Why don’t you just tell me what happened in your own way?”

“Yes. Okay.” She did, with some stumbling and halting and trembles. Something had woken her up, she didn’t know what. “I haven’t been sleeping well,” she admitted. “I wake up every time Daddy goes to the bathroom, or a truck rumbles by on the highway, or the house settles.”

Ben nodded.

At first she’d thought that’s all it was, one of those sighs an old house makes. Then she heard a creak, and what she thought was something brushing the wall outside her bedroom. So she’d reached for her phone.

“And then I saw him in the doorway. It was dark, but he was darker, and I knew it was too late to call anyone.” Her breath came in agitated pants. It was all Ben could do to stay five feet away and let Faith’s sister comfort her. “I told you I keep my gun under the extra pillow at night.”

All he could do was nod again. His entire body seemed to be locked tight, absolutely rigid. All he saw was Faith, her blue eyes dark with remembered fear. He had his back to Don, and Gray and Charlotte were no more than blurs on the periphery of his awareness.

“I pulled it out and lunged to turn on the lamp. He was rushing forward, a knife in his hand. He was almost at the bed …”

Charlotte made a soft sound of distress. Gray jerked, breaking Ben’s concentration.

Faith was hunched as small as she could make herself, her gaze still pinned to Ben’s as if she couldn’t look away. “I pulled the trigger,” she finished, barely audible. “Twice. Or … or three times. I don’t remember.” The blankness was coming back into her eyes, shock tugging her back under. “I saw … blood. He … he staggered and dropped down.”

“What did you do then?” Ben asked quietly. His hands, he realized, were balled into fists at his side. He could only imagine what her father was thinking and feeling.

“I screamed and scrambled off the far side of the bed. I fell down. I looked under the bed and I could see him on the other side.”

“Your gun?”

“It was still in my hand.”

“All right,” he said. “Then what?”

“I pushed myself to my feet and made myself circle the bed. I was holding the gun. You know. But my hands were shaking so much, I could see it wavering up and down.”

God.

“Did you touch him?”

She shook her head. “I could see his face….” What little color she’d had disappeared, just like that, and suddenly she sprang up. “I’ve got to … Got to …” She clapped a hand to her mouth and fled.

Char raced after her.

“Couldn’t this have waited?” Gray asked.

Ben looked at him. “You know it can’t.”

He knew he hadn’t succeeded in hiding everything he felt. Nobody was that good. Gray studied him for a moment, then dipped his head in acknowledgment.

None of the three men said another word. Five minutes passed before the two women returned, Faith leaning on her sister. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and let herself be settled on the couch again, the comforter wrapped around her.

Without prompting, Faith resumed her tale. “I edged out of the room, even though I wanted the phone on the bedside table. I was afraid to get that close to him. I knew he was dead, but … I guess part of me still thought he’d wake up and grab me. Dumb.”

“Not dumb. Smart. He could have been faking it. Getting away, calling the police, that was smart.”

After a minute she nodded, although Ben doubted she was convinced.

Her voice was grave now, and small, like a child telling a story about something so bewildering and horrific she didn’t really understand it herself. “I ran downstairs. I fell the last few steps.” Faith paused. “I suppose I’ll have bruises. I can’t feel anything right now.”

“Did you call from the kitchen?”

She shook her head. “Dad was yelling my name and I went to the living room. I told him what I’d done and he said he’d call, but I thought I should do it. And then I waited here until there were knocks on the back door and someone yelling, ‘Police.’”

“The shots are what woke me,” her father said, and Ben turned so he could see him. “And Faith screaming.” He shuddered, not surprisingly. There was a lot of that going on tonight. “I reached for the phone and managed to knock it to the floor. By the time I got out of bed and found it, Faith had rushed in here.” He looked at his daughter. “I took the gun from her. I guess you’ll find my fingerprints on it, too. But the way her hand was shaking …”

Ben had already spotted the Colt, lying on the bedside table. “Did you take it by the barrel or by the grip?”

“Ah …” Don mimicked reaching out, and they established that he had never held it by the grip or touched the trigger.

Ben turned back to Faith. “Did you see that it was your ex-husband before you shot him?”

“Yes.”

“How was he holding the knife when he came at you?”

She stared at him.

He took the TV remote from the bedside table and demonstrated the two choices, blade pointing up, as Hardesty had undoubtedly held it when he’d sliced Charlotte, or down, with the clear intention of stabbing from above.

Gray moved to lay a big hand on his fiancée’s shoulder. He didn’t like the memory of what that knife had done to her.

“Down,” Faith said, lifting her hand. “He was going to stab me.”

“You did what you had to do,” Ben told her, as calmly as he could. “You’d be dead if you hadn’t shot him.”

Unbelievably, she began to shake her head and kept shaking it as if she couldn’t stop. “I don’t know. Once I turned the light on he must have seen that I had a gun, and that’s when he rushed forward so fast. Before that, he might’ve meant only to scare me.”

“You don’t believe that,” Ben said incredulously over the voices of everyone else’s protestations. Her face was still so white, he stepped forward and laid the back of his hand on her cheek. “You’re cold again.”

Her head was still shaking like a pendulum slowing but far from run down, and she’d started to rock. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “How can I know?” Her gaze lifted to his. “He’s dead? I really killed him?”

“He’s dead, Faith. But you have nothing to be sorry for.” He crouched in front of her and laid a hand on her knee. “Nothing. Remember how close he came to killing you before you divorced him.”

“But he was angry….”

“Remember what he did to Charlotte.”

The rocking was becoming more pronounced. “He might have been …”

“Damn it, no!” His sharpness had them all staring. Faith quit rocking. “He was angry this time, too. He came to kill you, Faith. You saved your life, and maybe your father’s, too.”