Ransom At Christmas. Barb Han
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to her and, ignoring the sharp look from his cousin, put his arm around her shoulder. She repositioned underneath his arm and she felt a little too right there.
Zach’s cell buzzed. He glanced at Will and Kelly.
“Excuse me,” he said, before moving outside to the front porch.
“What is happening?” Kelly asked in between sobs.
“I’m not sure,” Will said. “But we’ll figure this out. We’ll find Christina and whoever it was that drugged you.”
Kelly looked up at him with those piercing violet eyes. “Promise?”
He nodded. Damned if he didn’t know better than to make promises he couldn’t keep. There was something about being with Kelly that made him feel grounded, connected for the first time since returning to Jacobstown. He needed to hold on to it.
A minute later, Zach stepped back into the room. “I just got a call from a Fort Worth businessman by the name of Fletcher Hardaway.”
“What did he want?” she asked with a mix of shock and disdain in her voice.
“He’s looking for his bride,” Zach informed her. His gaze bounced from Kelly to Will.
Before Will could demand answers, Kelly turned to him with the most lost look in her eyes that he’d ever seen.
“I promise I have no idea what’s going on but I’d know if I was supposed to get married,” she said softly so he was the only one who heard. “Please, help me.”
“Hardaway is under the impression that the two of you had plans to marry today.” His cousin’s words shouldn’t have been a punch to the gut. Will’s stomach lining took a hit, anyway.
He should stand up and walk away from this tangled mess. The feeling of being alive again won, against his better judgment.
“Stay here,” he said to Kelly, pushing to his feet. He squared up with Zach. “Can we have a word outside?”
“I’m afraid not,” Zach said. “That dress is evidence, she’s a witness at the very least and I can’t let her out of my sight.”
THAT DRESS IS EVIDENCE. Those four words hit Kelly hard. They followed “she’s a witness,” and the sheriff’s statement wouldn’t have bothered her if it had stopped there. Kelly’s instincts were screaming at her to get up and get the hell out of there.
The sheriff would stop her.
She already looked guilty without adding to her mounting problems.
Running would only make it worse. So, she fought her fight-or-flight instincts.
Christina was missing. Those words were daggers straight through her chest.
“There was a man in a tuxedo. He made me drink something. It was a clear liquid. He said it was water but it had this awful taste,” she blurted out, figuring she needed to say something in her defense. Her gaze bounced from the sheriff to Will, searching for any signs that either one believed her. For some reason what Will thought especially mattered to her. “I spit it out and then he pushed me up against the wall. Hard. He pushed my head back and poured more of it down my throat. I managed to kick him, break away and run. Everything’s hazy after that, and before is a total wash.”
Will looked at Doc. “Is it strange that her short-term memory seems to be the problem?”
“It depends on what she was given,” Doc Carter said.
“Do you remember where you were when that happened?” the sheriff asked. His voice told her that she wasn’t doing a great job of convincing him.
“Had to be a wedding chapel. Right? I think I was in a bride’s room but I swear I don’t know why I’m the one in this dress.” She pleaded with Will with her eyes. She met a wall of suspicion and it hurt.
“Can you stand?” the sheriff asked.
Will moved to her side and offered a hand up.
She took the offering, ignoring the frissons of heat from contact. They were more complications she didn’t need to focus on right now.
Standing made her woozy. She almost took a tumble, but Will’s hand wrapped around her waist to catch her. She had the fleeting thought that she wondered if the chemistry she felt pinging between them was real. Did he feel it? Those random thoughts had no place inside her head.
Christina was missing.
Kelly glanced down at the bloodstain on her white dress.
Someone was trying to kill her.
She’d trade places with her cousin in a beat because Christina hadn’t turned up and she might be lying in a ditch or an alley somewhere.
Tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Thank you,” she said to Will and her voice came out shaky. She chalked it up to overwrought emotions and whatever had been in the glass that Tux had given her.
None of this could be real.
Kelly prayed this was all a nightmare and she’d wake any second to find the world had righted itself again.
“What did the person who drugged you look like?” the sheriff asked and his voice was laced with sympathy. “Tell me everything you can remember. Hair color. Eyes. General size and shape.”
“Tall. Built. He was linebacker-big but shorter. The rest of the details are fuzzy,” she admitted. “He had darkish hair. I think. And he smelled like he’d taken a bath in aftershave. That much I remember distinctly. The scent was cheap, piney and overpowering.”
Zach had taken out a pocket notebook and was writing down the few details she’d given him.
She knew it wasn’t much to go on.
“Am I under arrest?” she asked.
“No, ma’am,” the sheriff said but his serious tone didn’t exactly cause warm and fuzzy feelings to rain down. “I will need to take that gown as evidence, though. I’d also like to have you checked out at the hospital.”
“She’ll need something warm to wear,” Will stated. “She looks close enough to Amber’s size. I’ll find something in my sister’s closet for Kelly. Everyone keeps clothes in the main house.”
Will’s face was like stone, hard and unreadable.
The doc finished his exam and declared that there was too much blood for all of it to belong to her and the small wound on her hip.
“There’s blood spatter,” he continued, “which isn’t consistent with the type of injury she’s sustained.
Will had already explained that everyone in the family kept clothes at the main house just in case the need to stay over arose. The reasoning usually included working too late to drive home.
A few moments later, Will returned with garments in hand.
Kelly released the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.
“Is there somewhere I can change?” she asked, flashing her eyes at the sheriff. He’d been a child the last time she’d seen him. Strange how coming back made her think everyone would still be the same age as when she’d left town years ago. It was silly, she knew that. But in a strange way she’d half expected Zach McWilliams to still be in third grade, his younger sister, Amy, in preschool.
“Deputy Deloren can wait in the hall while you change in the bathroom. Door’ll have to stay open, of course,” Zach said.
Panic gripped Kelly at the thought of a stranger watching her undress. She shot a wild look toward Will, whose forehead creased with concern.
He didn’t speak.