She heard the truck door open with a groan. Jasper shoved her and she stumbled back. He reached down and picked up a rock, motioning for her to go. She quickly moved along the passenger side of the truck, staying low. She couldn’t leave him, wouldn’t. Ethan Ford was right about one thing—she and Jasper would go down together if that was what it took. She moved stealthily along the side of the truck and across the front.

  As she reached it, she saw Ethan. His back was to her as he headed toward the grave. She also saw the gun dangling from the fingers of his right hand.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  JASPER HELD THE rock he’d picked up in his left hand. He had little strength in his right with his shoulder injured from being hit by the truck and thrown into the grave. He was unsteady on his feet, his eyes a little unfocused from the blow to his head. It had taken everything in him to get out of the grave. He would have never made it without Darby’s help.

  Now the bottom of the hole contained the broken casket. The log stuck up out of it, the other end buried—buried in the grave intended for him and Darby.

  But Ethan Ford was still here determined to kill them both and Jasper knew even if it were a fair fight, he didn’t have much to bring to it.

  “Well, well,” Ethan said as he reached the back of the truck, stopping on the opposite edge of the grave. “Where is our girl?”

  “She’s gone,” Jasper said, hoping she kept going and didn’t look back. All he had was a rock. Ethan had a gun. But he’d been in no shape to run—not that he thought this man wouldn’t come after them and track them down and kill them. Ethan was obsessed with seeing this end the way he’d planned it. He had to know he wouldn’t get away with it. Instead, it appeared he was ready to die—and take them with him.

  “I’m sorry she left, but not to worry, I’ll find her and bring her back. I want the two of you to be together. Unless she goes too far and then I’ll just have to bury her somewhere else all alone—after I make her pay for putting me to the trouble.”

  “Why take it out on her,” Jasper said. “I’m the one you want. This is about my grandmother, right?”

  Ethan chuckled. “I have no quarrel with Edith Cole. Although she was threatening to tell everyone the truth about Tory Caulfield’s baby. My mother was warning her not to for her own safety. Did I hear your grandmother had a fall down the stairs?” He smiled. “Sounds like she should have listened to my mother.”

  Jasper felt a chill at what the man was implying. “If you didn’t blame my grandmother, then I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”

  “Had you accepted my invitations to my shop you would have found out. I had something special planned for you. But you didn’t want to come, did you? Haven’t you asked yourself what it was you were so afraid to hear from me?”

  Jasper still didn’t want to hear it. Worse, he feared what the man was going to say even more than the gun in the man’s hand. Since all of this had begun, there’d been a memory at the edge of his consciousness—something he’d hidden away and was determined not to let out.

  “Did you suspect the truth that you’re responsible for your parents leaving Buckhorn, for the destruction of your precious little family?”

  “I was five. I was just a child.” But even as he said the words, he felt a chill as a partial memory flashed before him. Him in his mother’s arms, her screaming as he tried to get her to stop.

  Jasper slowly dropped the rock as Ethan laughed.

  “That’s right, you’re the one who spilled the beans, Jasper. You’re the one who saw your father with another woman and told. You’re the one who destroyed your mother’s life along with my mother’s. Just like I am going to do to you.”

  * * *

  DARBY REALIZED THAT her purse might be in the truck—with her gun in it. Or was the gun in Ethan’s hand her own? She couldn’t take the time to open the truck and search for her purse, even if she could do it quietly enough.

  She looked around for something she could use as a weapon. She spotted the hammer lying only a short distance to the side, not far from Ethan. Could she sneak up behind him, get the hammer? She began to ease her way along the side of the truck toward his back. She could hear the two men talking. She knew what Ethan was telling Jasper and her heart broke for him.

  She just didn’t know how he would take the news. He hadn’t wanted to hear it as if somehow he’d known. Or guessed? It didn’t matter now. All of that was history. The only thing that mattered now was keeping Ethan from killing the man she loved.

  Moving as quickly and quietly as she could, she was almost to the hammer when suddenly Ethan stopped talking and shifted on his feet. Had he heard her coming up behind? She froze, holding her breath. The moment he began speaking again, she let out the breath caught in her throat and inched closer to the hammer. Just a few more feet.

  “You blame a child for telling something he saw but didn’t really understand?” Jasper said, sounding resigned. “My father and your mother made the choice. Not me.”

  “Yes, your father. And now you will pay for his sins. Who better? And just when you’ve found your true love. Darby Fulton is your true love, isn’t she? After all, she risked her life to save yours by getting me to confess to framing you for murder—for all the good it does now. But what a sign of commitment to a man who’s been living like a hermit after getting the last woman in his life killed.”

  Now just a little to the right and behind Ethan, Darby bent down and, closing her fingers around the hammer, she lifted it from the ground, surprised by its weight. She realized it wasn’t a standard hammer. As she straightened again, she heard Ethan start to say something and stop in midsentence. As she looked up, she saw him starting to turn as if he’d caught the movement out of the corner of his eye.

  As he spun around, he led with the gun in his hand. She felt her heart stop as she saw the dark round hole of the barrel swing to her. Tightening her grip on the hammer, she swung the weapon. But she missed Ethan’s head and only grazed his shoulder. As he let out a cry, he pulled the trigger.

  For a moment she thought she’d been shot. But she didn’t feel any pain. She was charging the man again when he caught her on the side of the head with his fist holding the gun and slammed her to the ground.

  Pain radiated through her skull. The fall had knocked the air from her lungs, but that wasn’t what was keeping her down. As she tried to get to her feet, her vision blurred, making her unsteady. As her eyes focused for a moment, darkness hovering at the edge of her sight, she saw something that chilled her to her soul. Ethan was turning the gun on Jasper.

  * * *

  FROM THE OTHER side of the grave, Jasper had watched Darby sneak up behind Ethan with growing fear that the man would sense her behind him even if he didn’t hear her approach. Jasper told himself that he should have known she wouldn’t go into the woods and save herself. Ethan was right about one thing. Darby had risked her life for him. Again.

  He’d watched in horror as Ethan turned, pointing the gun in her direction. Jasper had no doubt that the man would fire the weapon clutched in his hand. Having already gauged the distance across the grave, Jasper lunged the moment Ethan had started to turn toward Darby.

  Stepping onto the broken casket just long enough to vault himself to the other side of the freshly dug hole, he lunged for Ethan. The splintered wood of the casket gave way under him, just as he knew it would. Unfortunately, as it fell away, it threw him off balance. If he hadn’t been able to push himself off the back of the truck to catch himself, he would have fallen backward into the grave and onto the splintered casket.

  He ricocheted off the back of the truck, pointing all that momentum toward Ethan’s outstretched arm and the gun at the end of it. Jasper heard the gunshot an instant after he’d thrown himself at the man. He heard Ethan scream even before Jasper grabbed the man’s wrist, twisting it with all his strength until he heard a loud snap. The gun flew through the air, cascading down into the grave. Ethan howled in pain even as he reached down with his left hand and pulled something from his boot.

  While small, Ethan was also quick and agile and eerily strong. As he turned toward him, Jasper saw the knife in the man’s left hand. The long, lethal-looking blade caught the light as Ethan closed the distance between them. He saw the wild, take-no-prisoners look in the man’s eyes as he lashed out at him.

  Jasper tried to shift his weight, but the grave was behind him, the back of the truck next to him. Without any room to maneuver, all he could do was try to hold the man off. As Ethan swung the blade in an arc at him, Jasper went for the man’s arm. But Ethan was stronger than he would have thought, tearing his arm free as the blade continued its arc.

  He felt the tip of the knife blade cut through his shirt to graze his ribs. Before he felt the pain, he heard the sound of the hammer connecting with the back of the man’s head.

  For a moment, all three of them were suspended in time. Jasper teetered on the edge of the grave. Ethan stood, his eyes wide as blood began to pour down over his weathered face, his gray hair quickly matted with it. Darby still held the hammer high, ready to strike again if she had to even as a look of horror twisted her beautiful face.

  Ethan took a step toward him, the knife still clutched in the man’s hand. He stumbled, stepping onto the soft earth next to the grave. Jasper watched as the man lost his balance. He windmilled with his one good arm, the other hanging at his side, the knife blade flashing. And then Ethan fell, crashing into the splintered remains of the casket.

  A hushed quiet fell over the cemetery. Jasper heard the birds before he saw them. The crows flew in, one after another, to line up along the fence. As if on cue, they began to caw. Closer, a breeze sighed in the pines.

  It wasn’t until Jasper heard the sound of sirens approaching that the birds took flight in a flurry of black wings. The spell broken, Jasper limped over to Darby. She released a sob and dropping the hammer, let him pull her to him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  THERE WAS NOTHING like a Montana spring, everyone said as the foothills turned green, the big sky turned a deep blue, and the sun finally began to feel truly warm. But nothing about the days following the incident at the old cemetery felt spring-like.

  An evil darkness had come to Buckhorn in the form of Leviathan Nash. He’d spread his poison at Gossip and even his death didn’t lift that black cloud from over the town. He’d exposed their closely guarded secrets. They felt exposed and now knew how easily their lives could be turned upside down. They weren’t ready to trust that something as dark wouldn’t happen again.

  It wasn’t until the story came out in the Buckhorn Independent Press that residents realized how Leviathan Nash had known what he had. There was no mention of the journal being found. Everyone just assumed either Leviathan Nash had destroyed it—or it was missing. That news swept through town like a nasty squall.

  Knowing where Leviathan had gotten his information didn’t come as a relief as long as someone had possession of that journal. Many residents feared what else was in there and worried about how long it would take for even more secrets to surface.

  In truth the journal wasn’t missing. Jasper had retrieved it. As a former law officer, he knew that the journal was evidence and would be held possibly for months if not longer while the investigation into Ethan Ford’s death was ongoing. So he’d hidden it, believing that at least one person in Buckhorn needed what was in that journal more than the law.

  Both he and Darby couldn’t bear the thought that Earl Ray wouldn’t know about his daughter for that length of time. So by the time Leroy reached the cemetery, sirens blaring, the journal was simply gone. The marshal no longer needed it to convict Ethan Ford because the man was dead. Jasper and Darby had decided that the best thing that could happen to the journal was for it to never turn up.

  It took a few days for Jasper to recover from his injuries. Fortunately, the knife hadn’t cut deep. A few stitches and he would be good as new. What was much harder was living with the realization that both he and Darby had almost died at that man’s hands.

  Jasper was more worried about Darby. She’d taken risks with her job, but she’d never come so close to death. Jasper had. It was one reason he was no longer a homicide detective. She was shaken, but a strong woman. She’d been through an ordeal. She’d killed a man. He knew it would take time.

  Being the woman she was, Darby had thrown herself into her work. She had a story to tell and being a journalist, that was the way she coped. She told the story of the man residents had known as Leviathan Nash.

  Because of Thelma Rose’s young age and Ethan being a sickly baby and young adult, she’d left a note behind with the infant. He’d been raised by his grandparents. The plan had been for him to join his mother once he was well, but that had never happened. Before she died, Thelma Rose sent her journals to him to let him know how important the work she did was and prove that she had always been thinking about him.

  His mother mentioned him often in the journal Jasper had rescued. It spanned an eighteen-month period in the lives of area residents. Thelma Rose often wrote how much she loved him and missed her son.

  There were secrets about residents woven into the stories the county nurse wrote in the journal. It was clear that she had worried about the people she treated and hadn’t documented the stories out of malice, but out of concern for them.

  The story of what had happened to Buckhorn was picked up by the wire and went national. Darby’s newspaper’s subscribers soared in numbers. She was offered numerous jobs with large papers across the country. She turned them all down.

  Writing about what had happened had given her a form of release that Jasper didn’t have for himself. He kept seeing that damned casket in his nightmares, hearing Darby calling from inside it.

  The only bright spot, other than having Ethan Ford gone forever, was knowing the truth about the past. The true story was there—just not the one Ethan had told them.

  After the dust had settled, they planned to visit Earl Ray. Jasper had marked the pages in the journal that dealt with Victoria “Tory” Caulfield’s pregnancy. They’d decided they would give the journal to Earl Ray, figuring he was the person who should have it to do with it as he saw fit.

  Not that Jasper hadn’t read what Thelma Rose had written about his own family. It was true that she’d been in love with his father and had been for some time. But in the end, she’d let him go, sending him away. When William Cole had left Buckhorn with his family, it was over.

  Once Thelma Rose knew she was pregnant, she’d known they had no future because she anticipated that the pregnancy would kill her. She hadn’t told him about the baby. She’d hoped he would again be happy with his wife. When Jasper thought of his parents, he thought of the little things he saw his father do to make up for his betrayal. In the end, he thought his parents had been happy again.

  * * *

  DARBY WAS WAITING anxiously as Jasper drove up in front of her office—just as he’d known she would be. She locked the office door behind her and hurried out to his pickup. The day was warm, all blue sky and sunshine. They both couldn’t help being excited about giving Earl Ray the news.

  She had to push an excited Ruby over to climb in, laughing as the dog licked her face and tried to sit on her lap.

  “Ruby,” Jasper warned.

  Ruby wagged her tail and turned to whip her tongue across his cheek before he pushed her away laughing. “Someone needs to train this dog,” he said and smiled over at Darby.

  He could tell that they were both nervous about today. Jasper figured the marshal suspected that they’d at least read the journal—if they didn’t have it or know where it was. He and Darby had debated turning it over to the marshal, but feared too much of it might leak out since it would become public now that the investigation was over.

  But they were also worried about how Earl Ray would take the news they were bringing him. Pulling up in front of the new house where Earl Ray and Bessie now lived, Jasper shut off the engine and looked over at this woman who’d saved his life in so many ways. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes even brighter than normal. They hadn’t told Earl Ray anything, not wanting to drag him into their misdeeds until the investigation was final.

  “Ready?” Jasper asked.

  Darby nodded and opened her door. They walked up the sidewalk hand in hand, the journal tight against Jasper’s healing chest. They’d waited until Bessie had gone down to the café, not wanting to involve her as well.

  Earl Ray answered the door. The moment he saw them he seemed to instinctively know why they were there. He quickly ushered them in and closed the door. “Coffee?”

  “Only if it is already made,” Darby said and nodded to Jasper, who pulled the journal from under his shirt.

  Earl Ray froze, his gaze going to the journal. Jasper held it out to him, but the older man didn’t reach for it. Instead, his eyes lifted to Jasper’s in question. Jasper smiled and nodded. What had happened to Earl Ray’s daughter was in the journal—just as they had hoped.

  “Come into the kitchen,” Earl Ray said, his voice filled with emotion. “Darby, would you do the honors? The cups are in that cabinet. Coffee first. Then whiskey as needed?”

  Jasper nodded and again held out the journal.

  This time, the older man took it. Earl Ray’s fingers trembled as he held it as if it were breakable. He dropped into a chair at the table. “It’s in there?” he asked, his voice breaking.

  “I marked the page,” Jasper said. “It’s toward the back.”