Page 50 of Christmas Ransom

Davy thought of the blonde nurse. He still thought there was something about her that bothered him. What if he wasn’t wrong? The answer was here, he told himself as he went down to the hospital’s main office.

“Can I help?” the woman at the desk asked.

“I’m looking for an aide who works here. Debra Watney?”

“I’m sorry, she isn’t working tonight. Is there someone else who can help you?”

“Did you say Debra Watney?”

He turned at the deep, coarse female voice, recognizing the sound of it at once. It was the same one that had yelled at him and his brothers for stealing her apples from the tree near both of their properties. Davy groaned inwardly. Cora Brooks had been the bane of their existences for years and the worst neighbor a bunch of wild Colt boys could have. She’d threatened numerous times to shoot them with her shotgun loaded with rock salt.

Cora stood not even five feet tall, but she was a force to be reckoned with. He saw that her right wrist had been bandaged, which he realized might explain what she was doing here. “Why are you asking about Debra Watney?” Cora demanded.

He had to bite his tongue for a moment. Nosy old busybody. “She’s an aide who works here.”

“Not likely,” Cora said with a scoff. “She’s dead.”

Davy didn’t have time for this. He started past her, but she grabbed his arm with her free hand. “Cora, I have to find this woman—”

“You aren’t looking for Debra Watney,” Cora said, dropping her voice and pulling him away from the nurse’s station. “Her name’s Jesse. Jesse Watney. I knew she was back in town, but I had no idea that she’d stolen her twin’s name and profession.” She clucked in disgust.

He’d frozen at the name—Jesse. Cora had to be wrong, and yet hadn’t he been suspicious of the aide from the get-go? “How can you be sure her name is Jesse and not Debra?”

“I know, so just leave it at that. Debra disappeared a while back and hasn’t been seen since getting into a car with Jesse. Jesse’s the devil incarnate.”

“Where can I find her?” he asked, telling himself that if he was right about the blonde aide, then what Cora was telling him just might be true.

“She’s been living with Judson Bruckner in a house they rent on the edge of town.”

He felt his heart kick up and then drop. Maybe Cora did know what she was talking about—but the aide wouldn’t take Carla there. Too obvious. “Is there somewhere she’d go if she didn’t want anyone to find her?”

“Probably back to the family hovel in the mountains.”

“Around here?” he asked in surprise, and Cora nodded. “Can you draw me a map of how to get there?”

“I can do you one better. I’ll show you.” She must have seen him hesitate. “That’s the deal. I go with you, or you don’t get the information. I want to see her face when retribution comes knocking.”

“Cora, it’s going to be dangerous. You don’t want to—”

“Of course it’s going to be dangerous,” the elderly woman snapped. “Jesse would just as soon kill you as spit in your eye. You underestimate her evil and you’ll be dead as a doornail. I’m going.” She started for the door. “We’ll take my rig. I keep my stinger in it.”

Davy wanted to argue, but he’d left the pickup he’d borrowed out at Carla’s. He climbed into Cora’s small pickup, as she pulled her shotgun off the rack on the rear window.

“Let’s go get her,” Cora said with obvious delight. “On the way, you can tell me why Jesse has your girlfriend.” He started to tell her that Carla wasn’t his girlfriend, but of course she didn’t give him a chance. “What were you thinking not marrying her a long time ago anyway?”

CARLASURFACEDASif from the bottom of a lake. She opened her eyes slowly, fighting to focus. Her brain felt foggy. For a moment, all she wanted to do was close her eyes and go back to the darkness.

But then her brain snapped in. Her eyes flew open, and she bolted upright to quickly take in her surroundings. The smelly, lumpy mattress she’d been lying on. The worn wooden floor. The log walls. The cloudy dust-coated old window. The snowy pines beyond it.

At the sound of something popping and cracking, she turned her head and saw the ancient rock fireplace, its face dark with layers of soot. A small fire burned at the back of it, sending out puffs of heat into the cold room.

“You’re finally awake.”

She started at the female voice, her head swiveling around to see the woman standing in the doorway. It all came back in a flash at the sight of the blonde aide. A gun dangled from the woman’s right hand as she moved into the room and dragged over what was left of an old cloth recliner. She sat and leaned forward, balancing the gun on one thigh.

“Where are we?” Carla asked, her mouth dry and her tongue feeling too large for her mouth. Their conversation earlier tonight had been short, punctuated by the needle the woman had jammed into her arm as they’d struggled on the couch. Carla had been at a distinct disadvantage, given the cast on her leg. She vaguely remembered being half dragged out to the woman’s vehicle. After that, nothing.

“Does it matter where we are?” the blonde asked.

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