Page 144 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

“They’ll know.”

“Like they knew I was involved with the bombing. Yet, here I am.” He lifted both hands and let them drop. “Because it’s not about what theyknow,it’s about what they canprove.And without a body, without a murder weapon, they won’t be able to prove a thing.”

“You’re a monster, you know that?”

“I’m just a man, a man who made a stupid decision a long time ago. A man who got away with it and intends to keep getting away with it.” He pushed to his feet and looked down at her. “Where is she?”

Aspen shook her head. “I’m not going to tell you.”

He lifted the gun and pressed the barrel against her head. “Where. Is. She?”

The feel of that cold, hard barrel…

The knowledge that he could take her life with the squeeze of a finger.

Terror overcame her.

A scream crawled up from her belly, but she clamped her lips shut and pressed her eyes closed. And breathed. In and out. In and out. She focused her thoughts elsewhere, on the sting of the cold air. The feel of downy flakes landing on her nose and cheeks. The sound of the wind whispering through the trees.

Whether at the top of a mountain in New Hampshire or at the edge of the world on a Hawaiian beach, God had created a planet filled with beautiful people. People like her best friend and her father, who’d loved her so well. People like Garrett, who’d tried to protect her.

Garrett, whose heart would break. Would he live the rest of his life not knowing what had become of her? Would he believe she’d killed his uncle and then escaped?

No. Garrett would never think the worst of her, not the way she’d thought the worst of him.

Forgive me.

God did, and Garrett would. In time.

Protect him, Father. Let him have a good life.

She had. Maybe not as good a life as some, but certainly not as bad as others. At least she didn’t have to live with what Brent Salcito had lived with for thirty years. At least she didn’t have to spend her life dragging around a weight of regret.

Her God had freed her of all of that.

If this was the end for her, so be it.

The gun pressed harder against her skull, jabbing into her skin and making the ache from her concussion throb.

She was done with it. She was done with all of it.

She wasn’t going to just sit there and let him threaten her.

Whipping her hand up, she whacked the gun away.

And then opened her eyes.

What had she done?

Salcito was off-balance.

She’d surprised him. She pushed up and rammed into him, sending him sprawling, and darted around the house, expecting to hear the roar of a gunshot, feel the sting of a bullet.

But he didn’t pull the trigger.

She darted into the trees between this house and the one beside it. These houses were too close together to offer very much in the way of forest between them.

Salcito crashed through the woods behind her, uttering obscenities under his breath. Why didn’t he just shoot her?

---