Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

“D ID IT TO YOU ?” Stuart repeated, as if trying to make sense out of this. “Are you saying—”

“He attacked me,” Bailey said, her voice breaking. She could tell that he didn’t want to hear this, didn’t want to believe it had happened to her. She’d never told anyone, had hoped she’d never have to. There’d been a time when she’d denied to herself that it had even happened.

But when she met Stuart’s gaze, she knew she was going to have to tell him everything. The thought made her sick to her stomach.

He stood, silhouetted against the kitchen light he’d turned on as if afraid to move. “I don’t understand,” he said keeping his voice soft, devoid of the one thing he knew would break her: sympathy. He was still the sheriff, the man she needed right now a lot more than the cowboy who’d been in love with her for years. But it was that lovesick cowboy who broke her heart. He thought he wanted to hear this, but he didn’t. “If you know who he is—”

“How can you even ask me that?” She looked away for a moment, hating the haunted look she’d seen in his eyes. He loved her. She’d never questioned that. Which made it so much harder to tell him, knowing how it would hurt him, because he loved her and always wanted to keep her safe—not knowing it was impossible.

He raked his fingers through his longish blond hair. “How is it you weren’t killed?” he asked.

“I got away from him,” she said, but could see he was still having trouble trying to understand why she hadn’t come to the law for help. “Don’t you think I would have told you if I knew who he was?”

She held his gaze with a defiant one of her own for a moment before she had to look away again. “I never saw his face. He wore a mask. He changed his voice. I don’t know who he is.” She sounded angry and frustrated and scared. That too was hard to admit. She was terrified. “If I knew who he was, he’d already be dead, and Willow...” Her voice cracked. “She’d still be alive.”

S TUART STARED AT HER . Hadn’t this been his greatest fear? Be what she needs right now. She needs the sheriff, not some lovesick cowboy . “I’ll take you down to the department, and we’ll get it all on the record,” he said.

She groaned. “I don’t even want to tell you , because it won’t help. Like I said, I don’t know who he is.”

“As much as I will hate hearing what happened, Bailey, I’m the sheriff—”

“But you’re quitting,” she snapped.

He swore, his gaze locking with hers. “There is no way I can quit now. Whoever hurt you... I have to find him.” He shook his head.

Her eyes filled with tears. “I’ll tell you. But not down there at your office. No... I can’t.”

“Okay, tell me here, now, just the two of us.” She looked so skeptical. He hated to think that she’d lost faith in him—the way he’d lost it in himself.

She hesitated. Then the words began to pour out of her, tumbling over each other. “I was terrified at first that he could come for me again, and I wouldn’t see him until it was too late. But he didn’t,” she said as she began to pace his small living room. “I thought since I’d gotten away, he’d never do it again. It was so long ago...” Her voice broke as she turned to look at him. “Then I heard about Willow.”

“No one is blaming you,” he said, still standing in the doorway.

Bailey shook her head. “ I blame me.” He could tell she was fighting breaking down. He’d only seen Bailey truly bawl once, years ago, when she’d fallen from a tree and broken her arm. Even then she’d stopped almost as quickly as she’d started, fighting the pain as if crying was a failing, a weakness she wouldn’t allow herself.

“When Willow came to Powder Crossing, took the job at the hotel, I saw her resemblance to me when I was younger...” She breathed hard. “But she was blonde . How was I to know that she’d gone back to dark hair? With dark hair, she would have looked so much like me when I was that age that he....” She froze, her gaze slowly rising to his. “I didn’t want to believe he would do it again, because that would mean he might still be coming for me. But when I heard it was Willow, I knew. Willow was his message. Unless you can tell me that he didn’t do it again, that it was someone else... I need to know what he did to her.”

Stuart thought about his resignation letter. He’d been ready to walk away and never look back, but now... He cleared his voice. He’d been afraid that he could no longer do his job, and it was a disservice to the people he’d promised to protect. He’d handed Willow’s case over to the state crime team, telling himself they would find her killer. But they hadn’t yet.

He took a long breath and let it out as he watched her face. “Her wrists and ankles had been bound. She’d been choked with a cord or garrote. She’d been sexually assaulted.” Bailey looked as if she had stopped breathing. He knew what she was waiting for, the one thing that might tie the two cases together. His heart pounded painfully. He could barely choke out the words. “She had a small horseshoe-shaped brand on her left breast.”

Her hand went to her mouth, eyes filling again.

“Bailey?” He knew without her saying a word, and yet he was going to have to hear it all. Just as he knew that he was going to tear up his resignation letter first thing in the morning. He had to stay, knowing what the woman he loved had been through—that the man might be coming for her again.

As devastated as he felt, he fought not to show it. He didn’t want to think about what the man had done to her. He fought to push away all his doubts and fears and just do the job he’d been hired to do. “When did it happen?”

“When I was seventeen, just before I left for college.”

Oh, my God. He couldn’t stand the thought that she’d been carrying this secret around all this time. The weight of it was enough to change her into the angry, secretive woman she’d become. His hands fisted at his sides. He had to remind himself that if he was going to stay on the job, he had to be the lawman he’d been trained to be. He had wanted the bastard found before. He just hadn’t been sure he could make it happen. Now he had to.

But as angry and upset as he was, he ached to comfort this woman he had loved for so long. He desperately wanted to take her in his arms and promise that no one would ever hurt her again. But he couldn’t make that promise. It was going to take a lot more than a hug and empty promises–two things she definitely wouldn’t want right now. She needed him to be the law. She needed him to find this man.

“I’m sorry, but I’m going to need to know what happened to you, all of the details,” he said. “It’s the only way I can find him.”

She gave him a disbelieving look. “What makes you think you can find him? I’ve been looking for him for years.”

That surprised him. “You have?”

“He still lives around here. I can...feel him as if he’s been watching me, waiting.”

Stuart felt a chill encircle his neck like a garrote. Any other woman and he’d have thought this was only her fear talking. But this was Bailey McKenna.

“I’ve always known it was just a matter of time before he came for me again. I’d hoped to find him first.” Her blue eyes gleamed with a hatred that couldn’t dim the fear. “Willow was his message to me that the waiting is over. He’s coming for me. If I don’t find him before then...”

I T WAS GOING to be a long night. Stuart made a pot of coffee and finally got Bailey to sit down on one end of the couch. He took the other end—just as they’d done on so many other nights when they’d shared a beer or two. Only tonight all he’d offered her was coffee. “I need this on the record,” he told her. “I need to video record it.”

She recoiled. For a moment, he thought she might balk and walk out. He couldn’t make her tell him. He could see how hard this was for her as she slowly nodded. “For Willow,” she whispered.

He turned on his phone and recorded the date and who was present before he said, “I need to know everything you can remember about the attack.”

“Don’t you mean everything I can never forget?” Making an angry swipe at an errant tear, she took a ragged breath and let it out. He could see her drawing herself up, bracing herself to finally tell someone what had happened to her twelve years ago.

He recalled the young woman she’d been at seventeen and questioned why he hadn’t seen a change in her before she left for college. Everyone had just assumed it had been the years away that had made her the way she was when she’d finally returned to the ranch. She hadn’t even come home for holidays during college.

The woman who’d returned hadn’t been the Bailey he’d known. Some people blamed an assumed bad love affair. Others thought it had been college, blaming higher education. Stuart only knew that she wasn’t that wild, free spirit she’d been before that summer when she’d packed up and left for college.

Now she stared straight ahead. He could tell by her expression that she would have never told anyone, determined to handle it herself, if Willow hadn’t been murdered.

“My father invited him to the ranch,” she said, her blue eyes dulled by the memory. “Along with close to thirty other ranchers for some political maneuvering he called a barbecue.”

Stuart heard the pain and anger in her words and felt a start as he recalled the tension between her and her father all these years. Holden McKenna had invited the man who assaulted her to the ranch?

“I don’t remember the exact reason for the barbecue,” she continued. “Something about a bill he hoped to get passed to do with ranch land taxes.” She shook her head. “He insisted I be there. Insisted I wear a dress and act the lady of the house.” Stuart heard bitterness in every word she bit out. “He’s the one who sent me down to the pasture after he said someone mentioned that one of the horses had gotten out. I questioned him after that. Why did he ask me to go to the stable? He said he could see how bored I was and wasn’t surprised when I didn’t come back. And no, he didn’t recall who’d mentioned the horse being out.”

Bailey fell silent for a moment, but he could hear her breathing. “I never saw the man’s face, but I knew he’d been waiting for me and that he was from the group my father had invited to the ranch even before he grabbed me. I saw his boots, shiny dress boots, and his gray Western shirt when he grabbed me from behind, covering my mouth with his leather-gloved hand, his arm around my waist. He was large and very strong. My feet didn’t touch the ground as he carried me away from the stable and into the woods to that old cabin no one had gotten around to tearing down.”

“The one you tore down the summer you came home from college,” Stuart said as everything began to make sense. Her brother Cooper, his best friend, had joked that his sister was taking out her aggression on an old building on the ranch. She is one angry woman , Cooper had said. Dad has no idea what is going on with her but told us all to give her space. Not a problem given the mood she’s been in.

“I fought him until he pulled a syringe and stuck the needle into me. When I came to, I was lying on the floor of the cabin naked. I was gagged, my hands and ankles bound, and there was a rope around my neck. He was holding the other end, standing over me, wearing a mask that covered his entire head.” She swallowed and looked away. “You don’t want to hear this.”

He didn’t. Stuart knew it was going to break his heart—just as he knew he had to hear it. The two attacks, hers and Willow’s, might be connected, even after all this time. If she was right, Willow had been the message that the man wasn’t coming for her again.

“I’m the sheriff. It’s my job. Help me catch the bastard.”

She gave him a look that was easy to read. Bailey knew his interest in her was more than professional. He didn’t bother to deny it. But right now, he had a rapist killer on the loose. He couldn’t let his feelings for her muddy the waters. Nor could he turn this into more than his job—a sheriff bringing a criminal to justice. Even as he thought it, he honestly didn’t know how he would be able to keep from killing the man when he found him. The idea that he might go rogue didn’t scare him as much as he thought it should.

Bailey began to speak again. He listened, fighting not to show his heartbreak or his rage, as she told him in a monotone about the rape and how he’d cut the rope on her ankles but kept the rope around her neck to show her how easily he could kill her, taking her to the brink of consciousness and bringing her back.

“When he came at me with what looked like a miniature branding iron, I knew I would do whatever I had to, but I wasn’t going to let him kill me.”

H E R WORDS CAME FASTER . “I was still suffering from whatever drug he’d injected me with, but not as much as he thought I was. He’d thought I was still docile like I’d been when he raped me.” She shook her head. “The moment he started to touch my flesh with the branding iron, I saw my chance. He stood over me, the rope around my neck in his left hand, the branding iron in his right. He was smiling—excited, no doubt, to see my terrified expression as well as witness my pain.”

She made a choking sound as if she was back there in that cabin, reliving all of it. “When the iron touched my skin, I brought my legs up and kicked him in the groin. He went down hard, dropping the rope attached to my neck as well as the branding iron. I picked up the still-hot branding iron and rolled toward him as he was trying to get up. I brought the iron down on his left shoulder, because that’s all I could reach. It burned through his shirt, catching it on fire. He screamed, swung around and tried to take the iron from me. That’s when I saw the knife he’d used to cut the cords he’d bound me with. I let him take the branding iron as I lunged for the knife. When I looked up, he had launched himself at me. I stabbed him in the side as he shoved the branding iron at my face. I stabbed him again, this time in the thigh as I rolled away. He howled in pain and tried to get away from me.”

She sucked in a breath. “He was trying to staunch the flow of blood from his wounds. I saw the fear in his eyes, and it gave me strength. I knew what I must look like as I cut the rope that bound my ankles and went after him. He scrambled out of the cabin, bent over in pain and trying to stop the bleeding. I would have kept going until I caught up and killed him, but I was weak from the drug, from his choking the life out of me repeatedly. He got away.”

This time her breath came out in a sob before she continued. “I went back into the cabin. There was blood everywhere, the floor slick with it.” She paused. Her eyes were still dazed. “I think I was in shock. My chest was on fire from where he’d burned me. I remember going to the creek, washing myself, putting my dress back on and hurrying to my pickup. As you know, I keep a gun in my glove compartment for killing rattlesnakes. I pulled it out and started the pickup, and I went looking for him. I didn’t know how badly I had injured him, but I knew he couldn’t go back to the barbecue. I thought I might catch him on the road. I never found him. But I also never quit searching.”

Bailey blinked as if coming back. When she looked at him, he stopped the recording and said, “My God, I’ve always known you were strong and determined, but Bailey, you are nothing short of amazing. I’m serious. You’re alive because of your strength and grit.”

She let out what could have been a chuckle. Or another sob.

“We’re going to find him,” Stuart said. “I promise you, I won’t stop. We’re going to get him.” He looked into her eyes and saw them glint with both tears and a deadly hatred.

Something unspoken passed between them, making him feel a little sick to his stomach. A part of him thought it only fitting that she would get to kill the man who’d damaged her. The man was a killer. But Stuart was still the sheriff. He’d taken an oath. And until he quit, he had to behave like one.

Stuart also knew that killing him wouldn’t give her the closure she so desperately needed. He promised himself that he’d find the man and see that he was punished under the law—and save Bailey from herself—if at all possible.

He still had his doubts about himself. Add to that how much harder this would be because of the way he felt about her. Not only would he have to find the man and bring him in, but also he’d have to fight Bailey to keep her from carrying out her vengeance. He wasn’t sure he was up to either, but he knew he would die trying for Bailey.

W EAK AND SICK INSIDE , Bailey felt as if she’d fought the man off a second time. She told herself that she couldn’t bear looking at Stuart. She’d feared that he’d never be able to see her the same way again.

But all she saw in his gaze was her pain and his love. He was right. He was the only person she could have bared her soul to because she’d known for a long time how he felt about her. How he still felt about her.

Tears in her eyes, she crawled down the couch and let him take her into his arms. He held her tightly as if never wanting to let her go. For so many years, she’d kept the horror of what had happened to herself, living with the memory, knowing she would someday come face-to-face with the man again—one way or the other.

“I know you have a lot more questions,” she said, clearing her throat and extricating herself from his arms. “But not tonight.” Rising, she went into his kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She stood letting the cold air soothe her burning skin. It would be daylight in a few hours. “Do you want a beer?” she called.

“Sure,” he answered.

It would have been so easy to stay in Stuart’s arms, so easy to give in to the desire that had beset her for so long for this man. But she couldn’t, wouldn’t, not until she’d put her past behind her. That meant finding the man who’d attacked her, the man who’d killed Willow, and ending this nightmare.

She didn’t believe in happy endings, doubted she’d get one. But if they existed, she wanted that more than anything with Stuart.