“You’re cold again.”
Her head was still shaking like a pendulum slowing but far from run down, and she’d started to rock. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “How can I know?” Her gaze lifted to his. “He’s dead? I really killed him?”
“He’s dead, Faith. But you have nothing to be sorry for.” He crouched in front of her and laid a hand on her knee. “Nothing. Remember how close he came to killing you before you divorced him.”
“But he was angry….”
“Remember what he did to Charlotte.”
The rocking was becoming more pronounced. “He might have been …”
“Damn it, no!” His sharpness had them all staring. Faith quit rocking. “He was angry this time, too. He came to kill you, Faith. You saved your life, and maybe your father’s, too.”
He could tell she hadn’t considered what Hardesty would have done if Don Russell had confronted him when he came down the stairs.
As if the words were wrenched from her, she said, “I never really believed …”
“You’d have to use the gun?”
She nodded.
Again, there might as well have been no one else in the room. They only looked at each other. “Didn’t you?”
“I did,” she whispered brokenly. “But I didn’t.”
Ben would have given anything to hold her right now, but instead he stayed where he was, squatting in front of her. “You did the right thing,” he repeated.
But God almighty, he wished she hadn’t had to.
After a minute he took his hand back from her knee and scrubbed it over his face. He rose to his feet and looked at Gray.
“Can you take Faith and Don home with you?”
“I planned to,” the other man said, in a way that told Ben exactly nothing about what he was thinking.
From the doorway behind them, someone said, “Chief Wheeler?”
He turned his head. The medical examiner, whom he had met only a couple of times since he’d taken over as police chief in West Fork. “Just a minute,” he said, then told Gray, “Watch her for symptoms of shock. She needs to be kept warm.”
Gray surprised him then by reaching out and gripping his forearm. One hard squeeze that felt like … sympathy. He’d seen too much, Ben realized.
“We’ll take care of her. I assume you’ll be by in the morning?” Gray asked.
“Count on it.”
“Don’t worry about Faith,” Gray said. “Do what you have to do.”
Ben nodded, allowed himself one more look at Faith’s face, white and shell-shocked, and made himself turn and walk out of the room.
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