Harlequin Love Inspired Suspense March 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 by Dana Mentink (novels to improve english txt) 📗

also, but it was as if her brain was stuck in a hopeless groove. Lord, how could it be? Again. It was happening all over; nothing had changed.

But her whole world had changed. There was a baby inside her, a tiny God-given life. And she’d thought something had begun to shift in Beckett too.

“Poor Rita,” she whispered. A young woman killed, discarded like a piece of trash, her death used to frame an innocent man. Had Kenny done it to punish Beckett? Kenny was a brutal man, but he didn’t seem the type to work out a plan to frame Beckett. His modus operandi had been more direct so far.

The longer the door to the interrogation room stayed closed, the worse she felt. Fatigue and despair began to overwhelm her like sand piling up in the dunes.

When the door opened, she bolted to her feet. Jude ushered Beckett down the hall and buzzed him into the waiting room. He had the dazed look of a sleepwalker.

“You’re free to go, Beckett,” Jude said.

“You’re…you’re releasing him?” she squeaked.

Jude nodded, the barest hint of relief on his face. “He has an alibi.”

Laney noticed in astonishment that another man was behind Jude. Neatly trimmed hair, nicely dressed in khakis and a polo shirt, holding a red-tipped white cane. She knew at once who it had to be: Dan Wheatly, the man Beckett had blinded in the high school wrestling match.

The impact of it left her speechless.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m Dan. Beckett was visiting me last night. You must be Laney.” He grinned, holding out his hand. “I’m legally blind, but I can see shadows, enough to fool people.”

Stunned, she reached out to greet him. “Beckett was visiting you?”

He nodded. “As a matter of fact, Rita called Beckett’s cell phone while he was with me. Interrupted our conversation, if only for a brief moment before the call was dropped. The call record of the phone found on her body proves it. It wasn’t possible for Beckett to have made it back to Furnace Falls to kill her in that amount of time.”

Willow grinned. “So you’re Beckett’s alibi?”

Dan gave a thumbs-up. “More than that, I’m his new lawyer. It’s time for my client to be going home now. Thank you for your time, Sheriff Duke.”

Laney followed Beckett to the parking lot. Her senses were clouded, but Beckett gripped her arm and kept her moving.

Behind them, Willow was in deep conversation with Dan. A driver sat behind the wheel of Dan’s car. “Would you like a ride home?” Dan asked Willow. “I think maybe Laney and Beckett need to talk and we can catch up on our old high school memories.”

She agreed, hugging Laney and Beckett before climbing into the car.

Dan patted Laney on the shoulder. “Things are likely to get worse before they get better. You’ve got a killer working very hard to destroy your family. And word’s already gotten out via the police scanner, so…”

“So the townsfolk who hated me before are boiling the tar and bagging the feathers,” Beckett said.

“Something like that,” he said. “Don’t let your guard down.”

Beckett drove out of the police station parking lot. Was it her imagination, or did the few cars on the road at that hour seem to slow and peer closely at them?

She pulled her sweater around her more tightly and kept her gaze out the window, willing the drive to go quickly.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Beckett didn’t trust himself to talk, so he kept his jaws clamped together.

Laney was silent for a full three blocks. When she finally did speak, her question wasn’t what he’d thought it might be.

“You went to see Dan. Why?”

“No point in talking about that now.” The despair came through, though he tried to squash it.

“I want to know.”

“Laney…” He broke off, without the energy to resist. “I had to tell him I was sorry.”

“Now? After all this time?”

“You said… I mean, you told me that I’d let myself be defined by what people said about me when…when I blinded him in high school. I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t that monster back then, I didn’t ever mean to hurt him and I have hated myself for it every day of my life.”

“What did he say?”

The wonder of it still pulsed through him, floating for a moment, just above the despair. “He said he’d known that all along. He has a great life and he doesn’t harbor any resentment.” He gulped. “He said he’d been praying for me all these years.” Praying…for him. Beckett could hardly still believe it.

“Oh, Beckett.” She caught his hand in hers.

He squeezed her fingers and swallowed hard. “Hardly seems to matter now, though.”

“It matters,” she whispered. “It matters.”

They lapsed into silence again until they hit the twists and turns just before Furnace Falls.

“Rita called you when you were with Dan?” she finally asked.

He’d been so lost in his mental morass, her words startled him. “Yes. It was only a couple of seconds, no more. She said something that sounded like It’s still there and then the call cut off.”

Laney cocked her head. “What could that mean?”

He hesitated. Was it fair to even mention it? Could he possibly stomach creating false hope? He couldn’t believe she was even sitting next to him. Her expression in the woods, the agony written there, killed him afresh.

Please tell me this isn’t happening again.

But there had been the other moment seared into his soul when she’d walked straight to him. I am still your wife, technically. I will not walk away from you. He realized then how badly he’d erred in asking for the divorce. It was the ultimate betrayal, an abandonment of the vows he’d made before her and God, born of his underestimation of her. But if he’d learned anything in the past week, it was that Laney Duke was much stronger than he could ever imagine.

He pulled in a breath. “I thought it might mean that Rita had left whatever proof she might have had behind.”

Laney’s eyes opened wide.