When Snow Falls (Whiskey Creek #2)(60)
Author: Brenda Novak

“What?” Dylan said into his phone. Impatient and unhappy about being awakened, he was letting it show, so it didn’t surprise him when the line went dead. Since that was what he’d intended, he told himself he didn’t care. He knew who’d just tried to reach him and he had absolutely no reason to call her back.

Except…she hadn’t sounded like herself. Was something wrong?

“Doesn’t matter. Not my problem,” he grumbled, and chucked the phone onto the floor.

He lay there for several minutes, staring at the ceiling and refusing to call her back. Cheyenne had made her choice. She’d chosen Joe. Although what had happened between them had felt serious, special, she’d never taken it that way.

But the memory of her voice got under his skin, made him wonder why she’d sounded so panicked, so flustered, so faint….

With a curse, he got up and retrieved his cell. It didn’t matter how hard he fought the impulse. It wouldn’t go away.

She’d better have a good reason for bugging him, he thought as he dialed. But if she did, he didn’t get to learn what it was. She didn’t answer. After several rings, his call transferred to voice mail.

I’m sorry, I’m not available right now…

What the hell was going on?

He hung up, but when he tried to call her two more times without any luck, he couldn’t pass off what he’d heard as inconsequential. What if something terrible had happened? Angry and disappointed though he was, he knew her mother was dying of cancer. So he shook off the last vestiges of sleep, pulled on a pair of sweats, a heavy coat with no shirt and some tennis shoes and hurried out.

Thanks to his motorcycle, he reached Cheyenne’s place in a matter of minutes.

Her Oldsmobile sat in the drive, but that didn’t mean anything. She’d been out with Joe. Was she home? She had to be if she’d called him. But no one answered his knock. And when he went back to calling her cell, that didn’t do any good, either. Her voice mail picked up again and again.

“Cheyenne?” He pounded on her door. “You in there? It’s Dylan. Open up.”

Pressing his ear to the wood, he listened for sounds from inside but heard nothing.

“Cheyenne? Where are you?” He might’ve called for Presley, too, but her car wasn’t in the drive. He guessed she was at work.

After crossing to the living room window, he peered in—and was shocked to see Cheyenne. She was sitting at the kitchen table, holding her head in her hands.

He banged on the window, but she didn’t move, didn’t turn, didn’t answer.

Heart pounding, he jogged around the house. He knew the back door was flimsier than the front. It was locked, too, but he didn’t ask Cheyenne to open it. He kicked it in. Only then did she lift her head long enough for him to see the tears streaming down her face.

* * *

The hospice worker had told Cheyenne to contact Anita’s doctor when Anita died. Together they’d gone over the proper procedure. They’d even talked about how to determine whether or not she was really dead, as if someone had to be told that having no pulse meant her heart had quit pumping.

But the reality wasn’t anything like what Cheyenne had expected. At this moment, the only person she felt safe reaching out to was Dylan. Maybe she’d been trying to convince herself that Joe was the more reliable man, but she hadn’t even considered calling him.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I—I shouldn’t have bothered you. I know what you must think of me after…after tonight. And it’s late. I’m sorry…”

He took her chin, looked down into her face. “Shh… Tell me what’s wrong.”

She squeezed her eyes closed. Remembering what she’d seen in her mother’s room nauseated her.

“Did your mother die?” he asked gently.

She nodded. Anita was gone, all right. Two days before Christmas. While all of Cheyenne’s friends were in the Caribbean or spending the holidays elsewhere.

His voice came to her again, just as gently. “But you expected that. She had to go sometime. And she was in a lot of pain. Now she’s in a better place. She no longer has to suffer.”

She wondered if he really believed that, about Anita and his own mother. Was there a better place? And were both mothers in it? Anita had always eschewed religion, insisted it was man’s way of trying to exert control over the lives of others.

Cheyenne, however, had often attended church with the Harmons. She liked the structure it provided, the peace and tranquility. So as terrible as she knew she was for even thinking it, she couldn’t imagine there were heavenly choirs of angels waiting to welcome Anita into heaven. Anita would rob them all blind if they didn’t watch themselves.

“Do you hear me?” he said when she didn’t react. “Do you want me to call the hospice nurse or…or her doctor or someone?”

Finally, she focused. “No.”

“Why not? Would you like some more time with her? You can have a few minutes to say your final goodbyes, if you want.”

She was surprised he’d said that. He knew how strained her relationship with Anita had been. Actually, maybe that was why he’d suggested it. Perhaps he understood that the strain also made this situation much more complicated. “That’s not it.” Her voice sounded rusty, as if she hadn’t used it in a long while. She almost didn’t recognize it.

“Then what is?” His eyebrows rumpled as he awaited her answer.

She started rocking back and forth. “I have to decide.”

“On…”

“What I should do.”

Putting his arms around her, he spoke into her hair. “You should contact the hospice nurse or the doctor, like I said. Or maybe the coroner.”

“No.” She pressed her face into his shoulder.

“Why?” he prompted, pulling back to see her face.

“We can’t call anyone,” she said. “Not yet. I have to think it through.”

“Think what through? You told me she’s dead, Chey.”

Her eyes latched on to his. “But it looks like P-Presley killed her!”

21

Dylan stepped inside Anita’s bedroom and turned on the light. He guessed Cheyenne had turned it off to hide what she’d found or as a subconscious way of blocking out reality.

The stench made him grimace. It smelled like Anita’s bowels had emptied on her death. But that wasn’t what concerned him. The lamp that had been knocked off the nightstand suggested a struggle of some sort. So did the unnatural position of Anita’s body. And there was blood on her face from her nose, as well as blood on the pillow lying next to her.