She nearly dumped the girl on the hall floor, turned her back and fumbled with the lock. But she heard footsteps on the stairs. Miss Etta could still have the gun, or did those old ones only have one bullet?

Her hands behind her back, Tess twisted the key, then the knob. The door opened. Sandy clung to her waist. The storm door was locked, a small sliding lock.

“You come back, you bad girls!” Mama Sybil’s deep voice came from above. “I’ll have to smack and shoot you both!”

Please, Lord, Tess prayed. Please get us out of this madhouse!

She was going to kick out the glass. No running into the house, where Miss Etta could trap them. Tied like this, there was no way she could use a phone or get out another door. She was going to leave this place forever, one way or the other. Miss Etta’s footsteps and Mama Sybil’s voice came closer. Sandy started to wail. It almost took Tess back twenty years, but she fought the fear. She heaved her shoulder into the glass, but bounced back. She had to get Sandy away, run into the safety of the cornfield...

Miss Etta, bloody and disheveled, stumbled down the last few stairs. It looked like another pistol in her hand as the woman bounced off the wall and almost fell. She raised the gun, pointed it at Tess and fired—but the only sound was a click.

Tess turned to the glass door, lifted her foot and kicked repeatedly at it. It cracked, crunched and finally shattered, leaving only the frame. Miss Etta righted herself, came closer and grabbed the screaming child, but Tess shoved and elbowed her away.

“Get outside!” Tess screamed at Sandy.

“I have more guns!” Miss Etta said, in her own voice. “I’ll get my other guns!” She didn’t run back upstairs but down the hall.

When Sandy seemed frozen in fear, Tess stepped through the opening, then said, calmly, quietly, “Sandy, come out now. We are going to see your mommy.”

The girl shuffled to the door. “It’s dark and if I run away, Mr. Mean will get me.”

“No, Mr. Mean is in the house, and he will get you if you don’t come out! Take a big, big giant step out. We are going home!”

The child finally obeyed. Tess yearned to be able to lift her, hold her, but there was no time to even get her on her back again. Tess looked behind them. Miss Etta stood silhouetted by the inside light in the open, broken door, holding another pistol. Tess and Sandy ran toward the field behind the graveyard with its old stones like broken teeth.

The cornfield was a sanctuary, instead of a site that would have terrified her just a few days ago. They’d made it only a few rows in when the entire area seemed bathed with light.

“Police! Don’t move! Put that down, Miss Etta!” Gabe’s voice shouted.

There was a gunshot. More men’s voices.

“She shot herself!” Gabe cried out. “I’m going into the house to find them!”

“Gabe!” Tess shouted. “Sandy and I are here in the field!”

With the child clinging to her waist so hard she had to drag her, Tess walked from the shelter of the cornfield, feeling free for the first time since she could remember. Three big beams of light lit her way, almost blinded her, but she saw Gabe, Vic and Jace Miller, guns drawn. Tess walked right into Gabe’s crushing embrace. “Jill?” he asked.

“Dead, I think. The cemetery—not sure who else, but I bet you’ll find Sybil Falls there too, when no one knew she was dead. Miss Etta was digging my grave.”

He cut Tess’s ties, then kneeled to look at Sandy with his hands on her shoulders. “We’ll take you home,” he told the child. “Your mother and father are going to be so happy.” He stood and looked at Tess, lifted his hand to finger the huge, tender scab on her head. “Maybe we can be happy too,” he whispered before he turned back to Vic.

“Etta?” he asked.

“Self-inflicted,” Vic said, pointing to his forehead. “Doesn’t quite resemble Dane. You get Sandy and Tess home, and I’ll search the house for Etta’s mother just in case. I’ll call, then wait for the squad and forensics.”

“There’s a dummy of Sybil inside that Miss Etta carried around,” Tess told them. “I think she put it to bed.”

Gabe’s eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open. He pulled her to him. “Let’s take Sandy home while Vic and Jace secure the scene. Then we need to get the forensics team to...to disinter things out here, out back.” Again, he put a hand on one of Sandy’s shaking shoulders. The three of them huddled for a moment, as if they were a little family.

Tess kept rubbing her wrists and hands as the blood and feeling rushed back into them. But, after Gabe lifted Sandy in one arm, Tess did feel Gabe’s free hand clasp hers.

“It’s finally over,” he said as, holding hands, they turned toward the road. “But for us, if you’re willing, Tess, it’s a new start.”

31

In the sheriff’s vehicle, Sandy sat on Tess’s lap. They were both in the same seat belt with Tess’s arms around the girl. Gabe told Tess how talking to her counselor, Mrs. Parkinson, had been the key to his rushing out to Miss Etta’s house. Now Tess hoped to be able to help Sandy get over her terrors. She’d stay in Cold Creek awhile for that—and to see how things worked out with Gabe.

The clock on the cruiser’s dashboard read 9:58 p.m. as he pulled up in front of the Kenton house. It had only been about ten hours since Miss Etta took her this time, Tess thought, but it seemed an eternity. Electric candles shone in each window of the house, and a sign in the yard read Bring Sandy Home!! Together, she and Gabe were doing exactly that.

But Jill Stillwell’s family would soon face devastation, if, at last, closure. Life was like that, the happy and the horrible all mingled together. Despite that, if Gabe let her, she’d like to face life with him.

Gabe went up to the front door and rang the bell. Tess got out with Sandy in her arms, the child’s arms and legs around her as tight as ropes. Lindell rushed out with Win right behind her.

“Oh, thank you! Thank you, Sheriff! And Tess!”

Lindell hugged Tess and Sandy hard as Tess passed the stunned-looking child into her mother’s arms while her father hugged them both. Tess saw Gabe’s eyes as he tried to blink back tears. She went to stand by him, watching the reunion through shimmering eyes and remembering clearly her own homecoming with her parents.

Tess realized that her return to Cold Creek had actually been a homecoming. Standing next to Gabe, with his arm around her waist, Cold Creek was suddenly starting to feel a lot like home.

* * *

A week later, Gabe and Tess sat at the picnic table behind her house, eating lunch and watching a big reaper harvest the cornfield. “It will be nice to see clearly again,” she told him.

Though it was a long bench, they were sitting close together. He leaned over to plant a kiss on her shoulder, then put his steak sandwich down and wiped his hands. “And can you see clearly—about us?”

She turned to face him and put her cola can down. They both leaned inward. It started out as a little kiss, burned brighter as they squeezed even closer. Despite all the difficult and tragic things that had happened, including the forensics experts unearthing Jill’s and Sybil’s bodies from the old graveyard, Tess felt almost content.

When they finally broke apart, she smiled. “It’s not fair you ask me something like that right before a McCord kiss. I can’t think when you do that. But yes—I want to be with you, and I’m not afraid of being here anymore. If I get enough money for this house, this area could use a good day care center. Lindell said Sandy will be my first student, and I know the time I’m spending with her now is helping.”

“Then I have a proposition for you.”

Her insides cartwheeled. “Such as?”

“Let’s sell both of our properties and buy one place on the Old Town side of Cold Creek. Then we’d have enough to build your day care out the side, the front—I don’t know—of our home, so your commute would be nothing and mine would be less than now. If you like that idea we will go on from there, and, when we’re ready, we can talk about other proposals too. So how do you feel about everything?”