Confessing to the Cowboy - By Carla Cassidy Page 0,42

going back to Maddy,” Mary replied. “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

Lynette flashed her a bright smile, her eyes gleaming with a touch of cynicism and intelligence. “Don’t you worry about me, Mary. I’m not about to let some sweet-talking, sexy cowboy break my heart. It’s more likely that Maddy will come in here and stab me with a fork.”

Lynette laughed and shook her head. “At the very least I wouldn’t be surprised if she keyed my car or tried to poison my cat.”

“She is a nasty piece of work,” Mary agreed, thinking of the pretty blonde who had been given too much by overindulgent parents and now considered whatever she wanted her due.

Minutes later, with the café empty and Mary all alone, she hesitated before turning the Open sign to Closed and missed the fact that she knew Cameron wouldn’t appear at the door for a last cup of coffee of the night.

But why would he come back here tonight or any night for a bit of alone time with her? He probably felt nothing but disgust for her now.

She was a criminal, somebody who had run from the law. She was a killer, for God’s sake, and he was sworn to uphold the law.

The spark of chemistry she’d always felt whispering between them would now be gone. He would never look at her the same way again.

But maybe, just maybe, by coming clean to Cameron he might find a lead that would stop the killing of the innocent women who worked for her. Maybe the ultimate sacrifice she felt she’d made in telling Cameron her secret would count for something and the killer would be caught.

She double-checked to make sure all the doors were locked before heading to her own quarters. If what she believed was true, then somebody from her past was in town killing waitresses in a misguided, sick effort to punish her.

And sooner or later that same person would probably tire of killing surrogates and would eventually come after her. She checked on Matt, who was peacefully sleeping with Twinkie curled up at his feet and then she went into her own room to get out of her clothes and into the oversize T-shirt that she slept in.

Maybe she was jumping to conclusions. Maybe the card and the frog had simply been weird coincidences. Maybe there was nobody from her past seeking retribution after all these years.

If it wasn’t coincidence, then she hoped Cameron could use the information to find the killer that had followed her from her former life before he killed again.

However, she also realized that if the murders were happening for another reason then she had completely destroyed her life by confiding in Cameron.

* * *

He stood in the shadowed darkness by one of the cabins behind the café, his eyes narrowed as he saw the last light go off in Mary’s living quarters.

He knew that the sheriff had been there for part of the morning and wondered what, if anything, Mary had told him about her marriage. By now she had to have known that she hadn’t outrun her past. The anniversary card and the stuffed frog should let her know that she hadn’t run far enough to escape retribution.

Action—reaction. There were always consequences for your actions and he was here in Grady Gulch to remind her of that fact.

It had felt good to kill Candy Bailey and Shirley Cook. He’d taken great pleasure when he’d sliced Dorothy Blake’s throat, knowing that he was taking away from Mary, destroying the people who worked for her, the people she loved.

But the thrill of the kills were beginning to wear thin, like an endless preshow before the main event. Impatience tapped through his veins. He’d like to sneak into her room right now and end this...end her.

But he’d been so careful so far, and he knew impatience and impulse made mistakes. That’s how others had been caught before and he had no intention of ever being caught.

With Mary Mathis’s death, the reign of terror in Grady Gulch would come to an end, but it would take years before people stopped talking about the time when good women, when hardworking waitresses from the Cowboy Café were murdered in their beds. It would take years before they stopped talking about him.

Chapter 8

It was just after midnight when Cameron reared back in his chair and rubbed his tired, gritty eyes. He’d been on the internet for so long the words now swam before his