Read Online Veiled (A Short Story) by Kendra Elliot - Free Book Online Page A

gun crammed in her ear. His huge hand.
    She did a double take. And his hand was
scratched.
    Will Marino had been killed before Patty. Why?
    “What did Will do, Mathews? Was he abusing
Patty? Were you trying to help her?” Her mind raced to offer him a way out.
Make him believe that people might think he was trying to protect Patty.
    Mathews ground his teeth, the sound grating in
Lacey’s ears. “She said she hated him. She couldn’t move on with her life
because he was always there, holding her back. She couldn’t have a relationship
or move out of the house because they were legally tied together in so many
ways.”
    Sympathize. “That sounds like a no-win
situation.”
    “I thought it would make it better. Everyone
knew Will was depressed and messed-up since losing his job. No one would blink
twice if he killed himself. And Patty would be free to start a new life.”
    With him.
    “Mathews?” Terry’s voice came through the
radio. “Where are you? Is Lacey with you?”
    Mathews lunged over the seat and punched the
“off” button. “Asshole.”
    Lacey wanted to cry. At least Terry and Jack
would know something was wrong. Had they figured out Mathews was the killer
they’d been searching for?
    Please, please, have GPS
tracking on this vehicle.
    “Terry’s a good guy,” she said. “He had nothing
but praise for the job you do. Even when you were puking in the bushes up at
the cabin.”
    Mathews had no comment.
    Lacey turned onto the road to the hotel. One
more winding mile. Was it time to make her own luck?
    Mathews gave a fresh yank on her hair, bringing
tears to her eyes. “Don’t get any ideas.” The gun ground in her ear again. The
car pulled to the right, and she corrected as he yelled, “Stay on the road!”
    She drove as slow as she dared, and the hotel
lights came into view. “Why here?”
    He snickered and said nothing.
    They drove in silence until she was a hundred
feet from the entrance. Part of her wanted to put the cop car through the front
door. But who would help her? Jessica at the front desk?
    “Drive over there. Park by the trailhead.” He
gestured to the far end of the parking lot, near the path that led up to the
gazebo on the bluff.
    Oh Lord. No.

    Lacey stumbled up
the trail in front of Mathews, glancing back at the beefy cop now and then. He
had Patty’s wedding dress over one arm, and his weapon trained on Lacey’s back.
He stayed within a yard of her, destroying any chance she had of getting a running
start. She’d weighed the options in her head. She could spring off the trail
and into the pitch dark, through the trees and rocks and shrubs, and hope she
didn’t trip and fall to her death. And hope he didn’t simply shoot her in the
back.
    That was her only option, and she didn’t care
for the odds.
    The moonlight illuminated the packed-dirt path.
She’d seen the end of the path from the balcony in her suite. Right in front of
the gazebo, it widened into a flat paved area for wedding guests. The pictures she’d
seen online showed a happy bride and groom in the gazebo at the edge of the
cliff while their guests sat in neat rows of white chairs in a semicircle
facing the ocean. On a sunny day there was no spot more beautiful in Oregon.
    What did Mathews have planned?
    “Why are you hauling that dress all the way up
here?” she asked. Wedding dresses weren’t light. Not that it mattered to a guy
of Mathews’s bulk.
    “The final nail in the coffin,” he replied, out
of breath.
    Apparently he spent his time building muscle,
not endurance. Unlike her. Could she outrun him? She glanced to the
side. Not in the dark.
    “You put Patty in her old dress. Why?” Lacey
didn’t care anymore if he yelled at her. She was running out of time.
    “I didn’t mean to hurt Patty, but after she was
gone, I realized I had an opportunity,” he puffed. “An opportunity to correct
another wrong.”
    He wouldn’t refer to what he did as murder.
“She was gone?” Who made her gone?