Nine Lives (Lily Dale Mystery #1)(93)

He trails off, shaking his head, and Bella absorbs the terrible truth. Bonnie had perceived that Steve was Leona’s killer.

“So you decided to get her out of the way, too,” she says quietly. “You decided she should die to suit your selfish purposes.”

“I’m not the one who gave her the death sentence.”

“What are you talking about?”

Seeing her startled expression, he attempts to gloat. “So there’s actually something Miss Know-It-All didn’t know?”

“There are plenty of things I don’t know,” she tells him. “Like how you could have hurt an innocent woman.”

“Innocent, maybe. But she didn’t have much time left anyway. She told Eleanor yesterday about how she just finished another round of chemo and the doctors are running out of options.”

Bella remembers the wig. To think she’d suspected Bonnie might be using it as a disguise when, in reality, she’d been ravaged by treatments in a fight for her life.

“She’s going to pull through this,” Bella snaps. “And she’s going to ‘go on and on’ about you when she gets to the witness stand.”

“What are you talking about?”

So he doesn’t know.

She’d only told him Bonnie had been pulled out of the lake, not that she was still alive.

“She’s a fighter, Steve. If she wasn’t going to let cancer steal her life away, then she sure wasn’t going to let you do it.”

A shadow slides across his face, nudging the mask out of place. He’s wild-eyed, starting to lose his grip—on his emotions, not on the gun.

“You must know this is it,” she tells him. “You can do whatever you want to me, but it’s not going to change what’s going to happen to you. A lot of people are going to be devastated when they find out who you really are.”

For a long moment, he just stares at her. Then he cocks the trigger and raises the gun.

This is it.

She braces herself.

This is where it happens. This is where it ends.

She fervently hopes Odelia and the others are right, that it is just crossing over. That she won’t just cease to exist. That she’ll still be . . . somewhere. Either on the Other Side with Sam or here on earth with their son . . .

Max. I’m so sorry I have to leave you. I love you so much, and I— But Steve isn’t pointing the weapon at her.

Wild-eyed, violently shaking, he’s pointing it at his own temple.

Her jaw drops. A word forms on her lips.

“Stop!”

It didn’t come from her own mouth. And the resounding shot didn’t come from the pistol in Steve’s hand. It skitters into the undergrowth as he drops to the ground, bleeding not from the skull but from his shin.

Suddenly, someone is there with them.

“Luther?”

“You okay?” Luther clutches a gun in his right hand and a phone in his left, thumb dialing it as he gives her a quick once-over.

Unable to answer, still trying to catch her breath, she just nods. She may not be okay in this particular moment, but she will be in the next—or the one after that. Soon she’ll be able to speak, able to breathe again.

“Yeah, send medics up here, too,” Luther barks into the phone, bending over Steve as he writhes and moans on the ground. “Tell them they’ll see a path right next to my Jeep and to follow it up. Yes, but it’s a superficial wound. Bullet nicked him in the leg. What’s that? No, she’s right here with me. She’s safe.”

He hangs up and pulls a handkerchief from his pocket. He tosses it onto the ground beside Steve, who grabs it and presses it against his bloody leg. Blood smears on the white linen.

Incredulous that he’s actually here, Bella manages to ask him how he found her.

“I heard a gunshot. Saw the maple he hit down there. If he was aiming for you, he’s a lousy shot.”

She cringes. “He was aiming for the tree. He’s an excellent shot. But . . . you couldn’t have heard it from the hospital.”

“I didn’t.” He holds up his phone, a twinkle in his kind, brown eyes. “I got your text.”

“But . . . how did you make it here so fast?”

“Magic.” He winks at her. “This is Lily Dale, after all.”

“You might just have made me into a believer.” She manages a faint smile, shaking her head, and he laughs.

“I was already back here in the Dale when you texted. I got to the house right after you left. Max and Jiffy had heard you leave, and they didn’t know where you were, but—”

“Max and Jiffy? They were there? In the house? But I looked for them, and I couldn’t find them.”

“They were locked in the basement with the cat.”

“In the basement?”

“They were playing hide-and-seek—with him.” He flicks a look of disgust at the man on the ground. “When I got there, I found the front door standing wide open, and I thought something might be wrong.”

Yes. She hadn’t locked or even closed it in her haste to go find Max, never thinking to question Steve when he said the boys had left the house.

He’d sent them to the basement under the pretext of a game, to get them out of the way.

I would never hurt a child.