Grace hadn’t missed, either. The shot had gone straight into Kingston’s chest.
“You bastard,” Grace repeated, the tears streaming down her face. She dropped her gun, and it clattered onto the porch. “That was for Scotty,” she said before she lifted her hands in surrender.
Chapter Seventeen
Jack wasn’t sure if it was a good sign that he did not feel anything but relief that Kingston was dead. As a lawman, he knew it would be a more fitting punishment for a killer to live out his life in a cage. But because there’d been the possibility of a mental facility rather than a prison, Jack was having a hard time seeing the man’s death as a bad thing.
What was bad was that Grace would have to pay for what she had done. She might be spending the rest of her life in prison, and while that did bother him, Jack knew there’d been nothing he could have done to stop it. He hadn’t seen Grace in time because he’d been so focused on getting help for Caroline and Clarie. Still, he wished he could have done something.
“Mentally beating yourself up?” Caroline asked.
Jack stopped his pacing so he could look at her. She was still on the treatment table in the ER while a nurse finished up the three stitches she’d needed for her head. Four more stitches had already been put on her arm. Jack knew the nurse, Mary Ann Colley, and knew she was good at her job. She’d even stitched him up a few times.
Caroline’s injuries were minor, he reminded himself, but Jack knew there was nothing minor when it came to Caroline. For the rest of his life, he’d see Kingston cutting her, and that was yet another reason he wasn’t sorry the man was dead.
He nodded in response to her question, causing her to frown. Probably because she didn’t believe beating himself upwas necessary. But it was. He should have done a better job protecting her.
They’d gotten lucky. Not just with Caroline’s injuries but with Clarie’s, too. The deputy had also needed stitches and had a concussion, but she was going to make a full recovery and would only end up missing a couple days of work.
It could’ve been a lot worse. And not just with the injuries. Grace could have hit someone else when she’d been aiming at Kingston. Gunnar had been right there, but thankfully Grace’s shot had hit only her intended target.
“Are you okay?” Caroline asked. She reached out, caught his hand and gave it a squeeze.
He knew what she was asking. This wasn’t about the injuries now, or the aftermath of dealing with the attack. She wanted to know if Kingston’s confession was eating a hole in him. In some ways, it was. The grief was right there at the surface. As fresh as it had been a year ago. But there was another side to this particular coin.
“I needed to know the truth,” he settled for saying. “It’s the start to dealing with this.”
Caroline nodded, and he hated when he saw the tears she was blinking back. She quickly swiped one of them away. “Eric claimed a lot of lives,” she whispered. “Kingston’s included.”
Jack huffed. “Now who’s doing some mental beating up?” He got right in her face despite the fact that the nurse was there next to him. “I won’t let you blame yourself for anything Eric did. And as for Kingston, he had a choice. He didn’t have to do anything for Eric. Kingston did it because he wanted to do it. Hell, he took pleasure in it.”
No way could she argue with that. Caroline had been there, with Kingston’s knife to her throat, when the man had gloated and bragged. He likely would have turned into a killer even without Eric.
“All done,” the nurse finally said. She stepped back from Caroline and took her hand to help her off the table. The woman handed Jack a piece of paper. “That’s a script for some pain meds in case she needs it. The pharmacy’s closed for the night, but if you give them a call, they’ll open for you.” She patted his arm. “Take good care of her, Jack. Give her lots of TLC.”
Mary Ann added a wink, which meant she probably knew that Caroline and he had started up their relationship again. Heck, everybody in town probably knew. Jack frowned at that, not because of folks knowing, but because he wasn’t sure exactly what his relationship was with Caroline.
He loved her, yes, and heck, they’d had sex twice since she’d gotten her memory back, but there hadn’t been time to talk of the future and such. No time to do anything except try to hunt down a killer. With that done, Jack figured it was time for Caroline and him to have a long talk.
A talk that would apparently have to wait.
Jack realized that when he led Caroline out of the treatment room and spotted his brothers. All three of them. And they weren’t alone. They had their fiancées, significant others and kids with them, too. On the surface, it looked to be an impromptu family reunion, but they were all there to try to deal with the grief of losing a father.
His brother Owen stood from one of the seats where he’d been sitting with his fiancée, Laney. She was holding Owen’s toddler daughter, Addie, who was sacked out and totally unaware of the storm they’d all just weathered.
Eli stood with his girlfriend, Ashlyn. He was holding Ashlyn’s adopted daughter, Cora. Cora was only a few months old and seemed entertained by all the people milling around.
Kellan was there with Gemma, and it was Gemma who came forward first and pulled Caroline into a gentle hug. She, too, wasblinking back tears, and Jack figured Gemma was remembering her own nightmarish past with Eric, when he’d tried to kill her.
“I’m all right,” Caroline assured her. Jack didn’t know how she managed it, but Caroline even added a smile. One that looked surprisingly genuine.
“Caroline stood up to Kingston,” Jack told Gemma. It wasn’t pride in his voice. Okay, maybe it was a little of that, but it was mostly relief. It would likely make Caroline feel stronger now that she had done that. She hadn’t been a victim tonight.
“I heard.” Gemma glanced down at his raw knuckles. “And I heard you got in some punches. Good,” she added before Jack could say anything. “I wish we could have all punched him a time or two.”
So did Jack, because it had indeed helped to take out some of his grief and pain on his father’s killer.
When Gemma stepped to the side, the others swarmed in. There were more hugs, more whispered words of comfort. His brothers and he all shared that silent conversation. A pact and a promise that they would get past this and get on with their lives.
