Blown Away Read Free Page B

let it matter. With every ounce of strength she had left, she started the car and put it into gear. The only thing she could think of was getting herself to Baton Rouge and, under the guise of her cousin’s identity, getting some medical attention. She’d been to Susan’s town house countless timesand knew the way almost as well as she’d known the way home from the woods.
    It wasn’t that far.
    All she had to do was get there.
     
    Lance had been only vaguely aware of the thunderstorm while he’d been inside the cave burying Austin Ball, but when he got back to where he’d left the rental car, he was shocked by the devastation. Trees were uprooted. Bits and pieces of sheet iron and lumber were scattered about, and the car was nowhere in sight.
    At first he’d thought someone must have stolen it. But the farther he ran toward home, the more certain he was that it had become a casualty of what must have been a tornado. He began to panic, fearing Morgan’s Reach might have been hit, but when he reached the back of the property just beyond the stables and saw the familiar roofline, he started shaking from relief. There was evidence of damage, but nothing drastic, and nothing that couldn’t easily be repaired. Some corrals were down, and there was a portion of roof missing off the barn, but the house seemed intact.
    He ran through the mud and then to the back door, taking off his shoes at the stoop before going inside. Too many years of not bringing in mud on his shoes had been drummed into his consciousness to do it now—even if he was the one in charge.
    He made a quick run through the house, checking for further damage. The electricity was off, but he still checked the laundry to make sure all the blood had washed out of the clothes he’d tossed in earlier. It had.
    Unable to use the dryer, he took the clothes out and spread them over the washer and dryer to air-dry. No time like the present to put his world back in order. Except for a broken windowpane and some missing shingles he’d seen earlier, the house seemed solid, although he couldn’t bring himself to do more than glance into the library where he’d committed the murder.
    Now that he knew his home and property were in basic order, focus immediately shifted to Carolina North. This situation needed a lot of damage control, and the more time that passed, the harder it would be. He grabbed the keys to his truck and headed out the door, intent on a quick visit to his nearest neighbor.
    His heart was pounding as he pulled out of the driveway and started down the blacktop toward the North property. He’d driven this road countless times during his life. With his brother, Joe, on their way to deliver Christmas gifts from one family to the other, then later, when he and Cari had been engaged. He knew and cared for the Norths almost as much as he’d cared for his own parents. And four years ago, when his parents died in a car wreck, Cari and her parents had been the first ones to arrive and the last to leave, long after everyone else was gone.
    The closer he got to the turnoff to the North property, the sicker he became. He didn’t know what lay ahead of him and wasn’t sure if he had the stomach for what needed to be done. It had been one thing to stop a stranger from taking Morgan’s Reach. It was another thing altogether to kill someone he knew in order to keep his secret.

Two
    E very fear Lance had of facing Cari and her parents came to a halt as he drove up on the scene of devastation.
    “Oh my God,” he gasped, as he stomped the brake and killed the engine. The urgency of his situation had suddenly changed.
    Every structure on the North property was gone.
    The house, the barn, even the corrals.
    A tree had fallen over on Frank and Maggie’s vehicle, and Cari’s car was upside down in the pasture beyond. He could see the dead carcasses of some of Frank’s cattle, but most of the wreckage the storm had left behind was impossible to identify.
    He