In A Killer's Sights

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Dean nodded. “Maybe.”

Mark dropped his gaze to his watch and then back at Gwen. “I need to get going, but I’ll see you later.”

“I’ll talk to you soon,” Gwen called as he walked away.

When Mark was out of hearing, she spun to face Dean and glared at him. “What was that all about?” she demanded.

“What do you mean?”

“You questioned Mark like he was the suspect in a murder case. It was embarrassing.”

“You’re overreacting. I just wanted to get a better handle on who he is. He seemed mighty friendly. Have you known him long?”

“No, I met him in the motel lobby the day after I checked in. Then I ran into him at a restaurant the next night. Since we were both alone, we ended up having dinner together, and he asked me if I’d like to go to Clingman’s Dome. You know as much about him as I do, but he seems like a nice man.”

His shoulders sagged, and he exhaled a long breath. “I’m not criticizing you. I just want you to be safe. Have you forgotten that you were almost killed today? You need to know someone before you get friendly enough to go for a run or have dinner with him.”

She propped her hands on her hips. “And how should I go about getting to know someone better? It seems like having dinner in a public restaurant would be the ideal place to talk and get acquainted.”

“Gwen, I was only trying—”

She took a step nearer. “I know what you were trying to do. I’ve seen you in cop mode before, and you need to stop. I’ll remind you once again that we’re no longer married, and if this is what it’s going to be like with me at your ranch, I can’t go.”

“You misunderstood me, Gwen. I know we’re not married, and I know I’m not a cop anymore. But neither one of those things keeps me from wanting you safe. Please be patient until Ben has a chance to catch whoever this is that tried to kill you today.”

She was silent for a moment, and then the anger in her eyes faded. “Okay, but you know this isn’t going to be easy. We may try to tell ourselves that we won’t dwell on the past, but we can’t just forget that we were once married and very much in love.”

“I know.”

She reached out and grasped his arm. “But we need to put our marriage in perspective. We’ve been divorced for five years now, and I’ve built a new life. I don’t want my old one to intrude on what I have now.”

His heart pricked at her words. He glanced down at her hand and then back to her. “I’ve always known you’d marry again, but it kind of threw me off guard when I heard you talking to your mother about another guy.”

Gwen sucked in her breath and released her hold on him. A look of something close to fear flashed in her eyes, and he frowned. “What else did you hear?” she asked.

“That’s all. Was there more? Maybe about how much you love him?”

She breathed what sounded like a sigh of relief and shook her head. “No, I didn’t say that.”

He struggled to keep from smiling at the satisfaction her words produced in him. He didn’t want to think about her married to another man, but he had to finally come to grips with the fact that there really was no going back. She had someone waiting for her in New York, and his life was here now with his grandfather. He took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. “I want you to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. I’m sorry I didn’t make you happy when we were married.”

She blinked to keep tears from flooding her eyes. “Dean, please don’t.”

He opened his mouth to respond, but his cell phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and stared at caller ID before he spoke. “Ben, what’s up?”

Gwen inched closer. “Is that the sheriff?”

He nodded and frowned as he turned his attention to what his friend was saying. He heard the words, but his mind couldn’t accept them. He sagged against the side of her car and covered his eyes with his hand. “No,” he muttered over and over.

“Dean, what is it?” she whispered.

He didn’t look up at her but continued shaking his head. “I’ll be right there,” he finally said, then lowered the phone from his ear and slipped it back in his pocket.

After a moment he straightened and lifted his gaze to her. “Gwen,” he whispered. He tried to say more, but his voice refused to cooperate.

Gwen stared at him wide-eyed. “Dean, tell me what’s happened.”

A shudder shook his body, and he closed his eyes for a moment. “They found the body you saw being dumped in the river.”

“And you know the person?”

He nodded. “Yes. It was my grandfather.”

* * *

Gwen wished Dean had let her go with him into the exam room to identify his grandfather’s body, but he had insisted he didn’t want her to have to experience that. She’d sat for the past few minutes on a bench in the hallway outside the room and waited. She still couldn’t believe that James Harwell was dead.

The memory of the first time Dean had brought her to the mountains to meet his grandfather made her smile in spite of her heavy heart. They’d hit it off right away, and Dean had been happy knowing that the man he loved so much approved of the woman he wanted to marry.

For the past five years she’d often thought of Gramps, as she’d called him, and had wanted to get in touch with him. But she couldn’t. She didn’t want Dean to know where she was or the secret she had hidden from him. Now it was too late for his grandfather to know that he’d left behind a great-granddaughter.

Through the years she’d told herself that by hiding her child from Dean she was protecting Maggie from the horror of having an alcoholic father. In the last days of their marriage, it had been agony for her trying to cope with his constant drinking, his drunken hallucinations and the uncaring attitude about everything in his life. The final decision to leave had come when she’d awakened one night to find him thrashing about in bed from one of his nightmares. When she touched him, he’d attacked her and nearly choked the life from her before she managed to escape.

He’d been repentant the next morning and vowed it would never happen again, but she knew it was a promise he wouldn’t be able to keep. In her heart she realized that she couldn’t subject the baby she’d just found out she was carrying to a life like that, and she’d left that day. Knowing she had kept Maggie safe had helped to push away the guilt she felt for never telling Dean about his daughter.

Now that she’d seen him again, Gwen couldn’t help but wonder if she’d made the right decision by keeping Maggie from Dean and his grandfather. Dean seemed so different, so much closer to the man she’d first fallen in love with, rather than the man who’d frightened her into running away. He’d been sober for four years—four years that Maggie could have had a loving daddy. Gwen shook the thought from her head. What was done couldn’t be changed, and there was no need to dwell on it.

The door to the exam room opened, and Dean stepped into the hall. He stopped and stared at her for a moment before he took a hesitant step. She rose as he came toward her. “Are you all right?” she asked.

He nodded. “As much as I can be after seeing the only family I have left lying on a table in the medical examiner’s office.”

Tears filled her eyes at the pain she saw in his, and her lips quivered. “Ever since I’ve been here, I half hoped I’d run into him somewhere. I knew he still lived in the same place, but I didn’t think he’d want to see me.”

“He always loved you, Gwen. In fact, he told me not too long ago that he still prayed for you every day. He said he might not know where you were but that God did, and he prayed that you were safe and happy.”

“He was a good man.” A tear rolled down her face, and she wiped at it. “I know you’ll miss him so much.”

Dean nodded, and they sat on the bench where she’d waited. He propped his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands together. He stared down at the floor and shook his head. “I wish you could have seen him at breakfast this morning, Gwen. He had on the Western shirt that was his favorite, and he was so excited about the new colt that had been born last night. Now his lifeless body is in the next room on an exam table.”

Gwen closed her eyes for a moment and remembered how scared she’d been when she’d looked down and seen a masked man dumping a body in the river. Now that she knew who it was she was even more troubled. “Dean, evidently the man who tried to kill me is the same one who killed your grandfather. Can you think of anyone who might have a grudge against him or you?”

Dean swallowed and closed his eyes for a moment before he spoke. “I can’t think of anybody. I’ve lived a quiet life since I came back home, and everybody loved my grandfather. He was such a good man, the best I’ve ever known. He and my grandmother took me in when my parents were killed, as you know. Then after Grandma died he raised me all by himself. The proudest I’ve ever seen him was when I graduated from college. No one in our family had ever done that. Then when I became a police officer, he couldn’t brag enough about me to his friends.”

Gwen smiled. “I remember. When he’d come visit us, all he wanted to talk about were the cases you were working on.”

A slow smiled pulled at Dean’s lips. “Yeah, he kept up with all my cases, even followed the trials I had to testify in. He was always there to support me when things didn’t go so well.” His face suddenly darkened, and Gwen knew what he was thinking.

“You mean like the Trip King case?” she asked.

Dean exhaled a deep breath. “Yeah. That was one that troubled me more than any of the others.”

“Does it still keep you awake at night?”

“Sometimes. I regret how I spiraled into alcoholism after that case.” He darted a quick glance at her. “And how it ultimately cost me my marriage. I couldn’t have gotten through that time if it hadn’t been for Granddad.”

She squeezed Dean’s hands, then released them. “He did all that because he loved you. Now you need to focus on helping Ben find out who killed him.”

“And who tried to kill you, too.”

She nodded. “Yes. So concentrate on that. Now tell me what the sheriff said. Does he have any clues to who the killer might be?”

Dean shook his head. “No. They’re not even sure what the cause of death was, so they’re sending his body to the state lab for an autopsy. It’ll be a few days before they get a report on the findings. In the meantime, Ben and his deputies will continue to look for any evidence.”