Page 16 of Murder Will Out
Willow looked back one last time from the doorway, fervently hoping Joel would not notice her again, fervently praying he would. When she tried to inhale, her lungs clogged with the intimacy and emotion that suddenly suffused the room, as though Geralt had become the fulcrum of something rich and incomprehensible.
She turned and ran.
The stone lions watched after her. She could feel them watching her.
She reached up to push her hair out of her face and realized her hand was bleeding.
She kept running.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
By the time Willow got back to the cabin, she was gasping and her stomach hurt. She plugged in her phone, one eye firmly fixed on it so she would know the second it had charged enough to power on. She cleaned the blood from her hand; the cut was deep, but she was fairly sure no shards of glass were still stuck in it. Before she could move for a bandage, her phone’s screen came to life; she dialed 911 and breathlessly told the dispatcher to come quickly to the Cameron House, because Mr. Talbot had collapsed. The woman on the other end wanted to keep her talking, seemingly unable to understand that the longer she talked, the longer she was not back with Geralt, whom she prayed would still be alive when she returned. Willow hung up on the dispatcher and, with some reluctance, started running again, back to the house, back to everything she had fled.
When she arrived, she found Geralt Talbot lying on his side where she had left him, white and still. The hands that had clutched his stomach had gone limp, and his eyelids were closed. Joel Drummond was gone.
Oh God, she thought, he was dead, she knew he was dead; shehad left him, Joel had left him, and he had died alone. Willow’s legs sent a halting message to her brain that they were not going to support her for long; her brain obligingly instructed them to back up to one of the wainscoted walls, where she sank to a seated position on the floor.
A tall police officer burst through the door; in less than a second, he was at the old man’s side, feeling for a pulse, shining a flashlight into his eyes. “You made the 911 call?” he asked; it took Willow a beat to realize he was talking to her, but she couldn’t make her brain connect to her mouth to reply. She heard him make a call through his two-way radio; the wordspulse threadyandpupils unresponsivepenetrated her fog of guilt and terror.
Not dead, then.
The officer glanced back over his shoulder at her; he looked familiar, she realized, though she could not place him. Square jaw with a well-trimmed beard, sandy hair, a face that was probably ridiculously handsome when it wasn’t fixed in an irritated glare in her direction. “I said, did you make the 911 call?” She nodded weakly. “What happened here?” he persisted. She tried to answer, but the words weren’t coming.
Wheels crunched on the gravel road outside and jerked to a stop—an ambulance, one of the few motor vehicles allowed on the island. Two uniformed paramedics rushed into the foyer to the still figure on the floor. A murmured conversation passed between officer and EMTs.
Leaving the paramedics to their work, the officer came over to Willow, squatted in front of her folded-in shape on the floor, and studied her as she stared at the young man and woman working over Geralt, unable to look away. The tall man asked, “Are you okay? Willow?” When she didn’t react, he snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Willow!”
It was enough to break through the fog and bring her back to the present.Rude, she thought as she jerked her face around to his; then,He knows my name.The man was staring at her coolly,as though she had been weighed and considered and deemed unworthy of his time. Her eyes dipped down to the name tag clipped to the dark blue uniform—N. TYLER—and back up to his face.
Her heart shriveled into a tiny lump as she realized why he seemed familiar. The blotches and pocks of a fierce case of teenaged acne were gone, his awkward, lanky build had filled out impressively, and the greasy swath of hair that had always dangled over his forehead appeared to have met up with an actual stylist and been vanquished. But it was definitely him.
Wonderful, she thought grimly.This day is getting better and better.
Also:Nick is hot now? This was unexpected.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “What happened to your head?”
“My head? Oh—” Willow reached up to her head and realized she had gotten blood in her hair as well. “Nothing. It’s fine. I cut my hand on the glass, and I must have touched my hair.”
The officer looked puzzled. “What glass?”
Willow looked around the foyer, suddenly realizing that Geralt’s cane and the splinters of broken glass it had sent around the entry hall were nowhere to be seen. Had she imagined them? But if she had, how had she cut her hand? She muttered, “Um… never mind.” Her mind was moving too slowly; nothing connected, nothing made sense.
“Can you get up? Can you walk?” Even after nearly two decades in Maine, a hint of Texas still lingered in his voice.
Her brows came together peevishly. “Of course I can walk,” she snapped. The anger and petulance he inspired in her were as familiar as if she had last seen him yesterday, but they were better than the horror, and she held on to them for dear life.
He stood up in one swift move. “Outside, then. Now.” He turned on his heel and left the foyer.
Asshat, she thought.Fifteen years later, he’s still an arrogant jerk.
She took a few more deep breaths, partly from exhaustion but mostly to deny him the satisfaction of her swift obedience. Shedragged herself to a standing position, lungs still burning from her unaccustomed sprints. With one last look at Geralt Talbot, she made her way slowly to the front door—then stopped and turned back, realizing the broken glass wasn’t the only thing missing.
When she had left, Effie Cameron’s shawl had been draped over Geralt’s body; Willow had put it there herself. The used towels were still in the foyer, tossed to the side after wiping up Geralt’s vomit, but the shawl no longer covered him. She glanced into the front sitting room, and she saw the froth of sea-blue yarn right where it had been when she had arrived at the house, draped over the rocking chair—not in merely the same spot butexactlythe same, down to the off-center wrinkle across the top and the fringe dangling at the same angle as before. She was sure of it.
The empty chair gave an infinitesimal rocking movement, and a new chill crept up from the base of Willow’s spine.
Was she losing her mind?
