Love at First Sight - By B. J. Daniels Page 0,53
died at birth.
That someone had to be Dr. and Mrs. Carl Vandermullen. Did that mean that Liz had been searching for her baby? Is that what had gotten her killed? Had she found the mystery man she’d advertised for?
Or was Joanna Kay dead—just not buried here?
Jack clicked off the flashlight and climbed out of the hole. The moon disappeared behind a cloud, dropping a veil of darkness over them. Only a little light seemed to leak out over the mountains to the east.
They had to get out of here. Before the groundskeeper caught them. They had to tell Denny what they’d found. Joanna Kay could be alive.
Jack stuffed the tools into the bag. He picked up the bag then froze, his body alert. Karen heard it, too. The unmistakable sound of a footfall. The faint rustle of clothing. Just yards away, the clink of something brushing against one of the tombstones. Someone was out there. Hiding. Watching them.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jack motioned for Karen to be silent although he could tell by the way she’d tensed next to him that she’d heard it, too, and was also trying to pinpoint where the noise had come from.
Could it be the groundskeeper getting an early start? Not likely. It was still dark outside. And the movement had been too…furtive. Too close.
He heard it again. The sound of clothing rustling as if someone had just shifted into a different position and it was close. Very close.
He heard a soft click and dropped the bag as he lunged to pull Karen down behind one of the larger gravestones.
The shot whizzed past, the bullet striking a tombstone behind them, sending up a spray of granite. The shooter had a gun with a silencer and wasn’t a bad shot.
Jack pulled Denny’s pistol from its holster. “Stay down,” he ordered.
Karen nodded, her eyes wide with fear, her expression one of shock. Fortunately, Jack thought, she couldn’t remember the other times someone had tried to kill her. Unfortunately, he could.
He stared at her for a moment, then impulsively bent down to plant a kiss on her lips. She smiled and squeezed his knee, trust and love glowing in her gaze.
He glanced around, looking for a safe place for her. The hole they’d just dug loomed dark and deep. He motioned for Karen to slip back into the open grave. She didn’t look ecstatic about the idea but she quickly complied without question.
A dream wife, he thought crazily, as he handed her the flashlight.
With Karen safe in the hole for the moment, he moved stealthily toward the direction he’d first heard the sound, his pistol drawn. Another shot zipped past with a hum, the bullet boring into a tree trunk behind him.
He rushed forward, using the gravestones for cover as he charged in the direction of the shot, determined to catch the killer, to stop him once and for all.
THE MOON FLASHED from behind the clouds, casting an eerie gray light over the cemetery. Down in the hole, the gray light only cast a long cold shadow.
Karen crouched, her body pressed against the damp earth, listening for Jack’s return, fighting fear for her husband. She kept telling herself he was a cop. He knew what he was doing. He’d be all right.
She looked down at the coffin at her feet, fighting her own fears. The darkness, the cold earth, the moon eclipsed by the clouds overhead and that terrible feeling of helplessness. She shivered and tried to think of anything else but her fears.
She huddled in the dark of the grave and thought of Jack. What an odd way to spend a honeymoon. She hadn’t even gotten to make love to her husband yet. And now they might both be going to jail. If they lived that long.
He had to come back to her. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing him when she’d just found him.
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness in the hole, she realized that Jack had left the casket open. She could see the doll. She couldn’t imagine someone putting a doll into the small box to be sealed and burying it, complete with headstone. It seemed so…sick.
She looked up at the clouds moving like waves overhead and listened for the sound of her husband returning. But she heard nothing down in the hole. Nothing but the frantic drumming of her pulse, her heart thundering in her chest.
Her gaze fell again on the coffin and the doll inside. The doll’s eyes stared out, blank, but…familiar. She