River Road(56)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

“It would allow him to hurt her,” Jillian said. “Brinker was into that kind of torture. Speaking personally, I will be forever grateful to your aunt for getting rid of the bastard. I just wish I had known for certain that he was actually dead all these years. I would have slept better.”

“If Brinker was the Scorecard Rapist, do you think Nolan Kelly might have been the one who filmed the rapes for him?”

“What?” Jillian looked floored. “Nolan? Wait a minute, are you saying there was someone else involved with the rapes?”

“It’s a possibility. One of the investigators at the time theorized that there may have been two people who committed the crimes, Brinker and the photographer.”

“I never heard that. I’m sure Nolan wasn’t in the room the night Brinker raped me. I was half awake. Brinker wanted me to know what was happening. But even if he had an accomplice for the other rapes, I can’t see it being Nolan. For one thing, he wouldn’t have been able to keep his mouth shut.”

“Good point.”

“Any way you look at it, Sara Sheridan did the world a favor,” Jillian said. “There’s no telling how many women she saved.”

“I’m sorry she wasn’t able to save you, Jillian.”

“In a way, she did,” Jillian said. “She made Brinker stop before he could force me to find him another victim. You were my first and last target.”

Understanding whispered through Lucy. “And you chose to try to save me by going to Mason, didn’t you? You knew he wouldn’t stand by and allow a kid like me to get raped.”

Jillian looked at the opposite shore of the river. “I didn’t know if telling Mason what Brinker planned would work or not, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I was frantic that day, knowing what was going to happen. I was terrified of Brinker, but I didn’t want to be responsible for you getting hurt.”

“So you told the one person you knew who could be trusted to come up with a rescue plan. Mason Fletcher.”

“Brinker wanted to control Mason the same way he controlled the other teens who circled around him. But Mason was the one guy Brinker couldn’t manipulate. You should have seen his face that night when Mason walked through that crowd here at the ranch to get you and take you home. Brinker was laughing like the devil himself at first. He thought another victim had just stumbled into his little circle of hell.”

“Brinker made the mistake of going up against a guardian angel.”

“Trust me, Brinker wasn’t laughing after Mason took you away. I saw the look in his eyes. Scared me to death, to tell you the truth.”

34

Give me a break,” Mason said. “You actually believe Jillian’s version of events?”

“Yes,” Lucy said. “I do. She was barely eighteen, and she was dealing with the equivalent of a sociopathic cult leader, a guy who had drugged her and raped her and was threatening blackmail. She felt helpless to defend herself against Brinker. She was afraid to go to her parents or the cops. She was scared to death. The bastard was holding the threat of a video over her head to force her to do what he wanted, which was to lure me to him. So she turned to the only person she thought might be able to save me. That would be you.”

“A plan which also had the advantage of keeping Brinker from finding out that she had double-crossed him,” Mason said.

He reached into the shipping box that he was unpacking and took out a handful of screwdriver kits. Each kit contained an assortment of precision screwdrivers in various sizes. The grips of the screwdrivers were neon pink. The vinyl storage cases were done in a matching shade. Deke had discovered that women were wild about attractively packaged screwdrivers. He had ordered fifty kits, all in shocking pink.

“Well, it was certainly better than no plan at all,” Lucy snapped.

They were in the back room of the hardware store. Mason had retreated to the crowded space to think. There was something about organizing plumbing supplies, hinges and screwdrivers that was conducive to the thinking process. Lucy had come through the door a short time earlier. He had heard Deke and Joe greet her, and then Deke had sent her into the stockroom.

Mason had taken one look at her serious expression and had known that there had been a new development. As soon as she had told him about the meeting with Jillian, he had said the first words that came to mind: What the hell did you think you were doing meeting with her alone?

That had not gone over well. He had seen the irritation and stubbornness in Lucy’s eyes and had to acknowledge that he had screwed up. He had growled a weak apology, which only made things worse because she had proceeded to inform him that the meeting had taken place at Harper Ranch Park and that there had been a number of people around at all times. He had to admit she had been careful, but he couldn’t shake the bad vibe that had hit him when he found out what she had done.

“Damn it, you should have called me before you agreed to see her,” he said.

“Give me one good reason why I needed your permission,” Lucy said.

He thought about it. “I haven’t got a good reason.”

“That’s right, you don’t. Going to you thirteen years ago to tell you about Brinker’s plan was the only way Jillian could protect both me and herself.”

Mason put the pink screwdriver kits on a workbench. “You really bought that story, didn’t you?”

Lucy cleared her throat. “For your information, she didn’t try to convince me that was what had happened. It just sort of came out after we started talking.”

“Wait, don’t tell me, let me guess. You’re the one who told her that contacting me was probably what saved you that night, right? You gave her the story that made her look like a heroine, not an accomplice.”

Lucy winced. “Okay, maybe I did put the words into her mouth. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen just as I said, even if she wasn’t entirely aware of her own reasoning at the time. But she agreed with me.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet she did. All right, what’s done is done. Just remember that the only reason Jillian wants to be your new best friend is because she’s desperate to get those shares.”

Lucy crossed her arms, leaned one nicely curved hip against the side of the workbench and looked stubborn. “Maybe. Maybe not. By the way, it has been brought home to me yet again that this is one very small town.”

“How’s that?”