Ellie's Wolf (12 page)

“After Quill has a few words, you can say anything you want to Moore,” he told Ellie. The sweetness she was used to seeing in his face was gone, leaving it hard.

Ellie looked at Quill. His suntanned cheeks flushed when she met his gaze, but he smiled at her.

The smile melted away when he turned back to Mr. Moore. All the men and wolves stood facing Mr. Moore, and Ellie shivered a little at how unforgiving all their faces looked.

“David Moore, you stole letters that Ellie Overdahl wrote to her family.” Quill sounded like a judge. “You tried to persuade her to marry you, and when she refused, you sold her. While she was absent, you mistreated her son. Those are the things we know. We suspect that you arranged your wife’s death and then killed Neal Overdahl. What is the truth?”

Moore drew himself up, fists clenched. “Are you calling me a murderer?”

“I’m asking you to confirm or deny it.”

Ellie was startled when Stone handed her the shotgun.

“Here, you hold this,” he said and walked the ten steps to Moore.

Ellie couldn’t hold the gun and her son. Strangely, she found the weight of the shotgun a comfort. Maybe that’s why the young wolf had given it to her. Or maybe he didn’t trust Sara with it. When Sara took Connor from her, she had a look of rage on her face that made Ellie glad the teenager didn’t have a gun. Sara held Connor even though he began fretting. Ellie patted his back to soothe him, still cradling the gun.

“Of course I deny it!” Moore turned his head to glare at Stone, who was sniffing deeply. “What the hell are you doing?”

“He’s lying,” Stone said.

Moore threw a punch at Stone that didn’t land because Stone casually swayed out of the way. Moore staggered and caught himself. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”

“Stone has the best nose in his generation,” Quill explained coolly. “He can smell a lie.
Now
do you know what we’re talking about? How did you kill your wife?”

“I would never harm the woman I loved!”

“He’s lying again,” Stone said.

Ellie took one step forward, gripping the shotgun Stone had handed off to her. Horror wrestled with anger in her stomach. “When you hired Neal to help manage your mill, you told him you were looking for a man with a young, strong wife who could help Mrs. Moore around the house because she was a sickly woman. That was three years ago. Was Maggie sickly three years ago?”

“Yes!” said Moore, sticking out his chin with a belligerent glare. “She’d been getting weaker and weaker ever since Tommy was born.”

Ellie glanced at Stone, raising a questioning brow. He shook his head. “He’s lying. His sweat stinks of it.”

“It’s hot out today!” Moore protested. “And who wouldn’t be sweating when he’s being threatened by savages?”

Stone shook his head. “Lies smell different.”

Ellie stared at Mr. Moore, remembering his wife’s lethargy, her dizziness and nausea. “Maggie told me she had never been sick until after you hired Neal. Did you poison her?”

“Of course not!”

She didn’t believe him. Maggie had been so kind to her, so grateful for her help. She and her sister had delivered Connor. This man had killed her. When he sat at his dying wife’s bedside, holding her hand, he had watched her so carefully. The sad expression he had worn was sometimes overcome by a strange smile. Ellie mentioned that smile to Neal, who had kissed her and told her a grieving man couldn’t control his face and deserved his privacy.

The memory of that smile came back to twist her stomach. Her hand clenched around the shotgun. “How could you?” she shouted.

The miller’s mouth compressed into a thin line before relaxing in a smile that looked forced to Ellie. “I didn’t do anything to her. You know me, Ellie. You lived in my house for three years. You know how I loved Maggie.”

Ellie flipped through her store of memories of the Moores. “Did you?” she said, not hiding her skepticism. “Is that why you spoke to her like she was a stupid child? You loved her so much you had no time to spend with her? Is that why you were
smiling while she died
?”

A low growling murmur went through the men. Moore put his shoulders back and glowered at Snow, who had moved a few inches closer. “This is ridiculous,” Moore said with an attempt at dignity. “You have what you came for, so you can leave now.”

“Not yet.” Ellie hardly recognized her own voice. “First, you have to tell me how Neal died.”

Moore stepped back when the men shifted almost invisibly closer. Their feral eyes seemed to intimidate him. He drew a quick breath. “Look, I told you how it happened. He slipped and fell between the millstones. It was a terrible accident.”

Ellie swallowed to force tears back when her mind flashed back to Neal’s mangled, dead body lying under a bloodstained sheet. She glanced at Stone. “Is he lying?” she asked in a voice so low that only a wolf could have heard it.

Stone seemed torn between rage and sympathy. “Yes.”

A hand of rage and pain clenched around Ellie’s heart. She stared at Mr. Moore, but saw Neal, almost unrecognizable from the crushing millstones, his face frozen in a look of horror and agony.

“That morning,” she whispered. “The morning he died. He left for the mill without saying goodbye. I was standing in the kitchen door, and I remember his blond hair blowing in the cold breeze when he stopped on the path and ran back to the house. He laughed. I loved his laugh. He put his arms around me and kissed me and said he had almost forgotten to kiss his favorite girl good-bye. We didn’t know then that it was really good-bye.”

Tears were running down her face in a steady stream. She felt the heat of them on her cheeks the way she’d felt the heat of his mouth on hers that last morning. She lifted her gaze to stare at Mr. Moore.

“You killed him.” She wet her shaking lips. “You murdered him.”

“No,” said Moore, but Ellie heard the guilt in his voice.

She raised the shotgun to her shoulder. “Liar.”

Snow and Snake stepped away from Moore, Snake taking Matthew by the arm to pull him out of the way. Ellie had a clear shot at the man who had murdered her husband. The barrel of the shotgun shook ever so slightly as she squinted one eye to line up the shot. She had fired a gun only a few times in her life, and she had terrible aim. No matter. At this distance with a shotgun she wouldn’t miss. In just one minute Mr. Moore would be as dead as the ones he had killed.

So why was her finger refusing to pull the trigger? A trickle of sweat tickled her temple. She bent her head to wipe it away on her shoulder. Think of Connor, terrified and alone in the filth of the outhouse, crying futilely for help for hours, until his voice was gone and his spirit broken. If any man had ever deserved to die, it was this one. Ellie gripped the shotgun with fresh determination, sighting down the barrel at Mr. Moore’s white face.

And still, her finger refused to tighten around the trigger. A warm body moved to stand close behind her. Quill. Somehow, she knew it was him.

“If you want to kill him, I’ll support you,” he said in a quiet, even voice. “You have the right. But how will you feel about it when you close your eyes tonight?”

Ellie swallowed. The shotgun wavered. She
wanted
to shoot Mr. Moore for all the evil he had done. She couldn’t. Her breath came out in a shuddering sob. Quill took the shotgun from her and handed it to someone else before turning her into his chest and wrapping his arms around her.

“Shh,” he murmured, stroking her hair.

There was such comfort in his arms enclosing her. Ellie clenched her fists in the thin fabric of his shirt. “I wanted to shoot him,” she said through sobs. “I did!”

“I know.”

“He deserves to die!”

“He does. Is there a sheriff around? A mayor?”

She lifted her head to blink watery eyes up at him. “Mooreton is the village up river. It was named for him. There is a mayor. John Justiss.”

She saw his lips quirk in a sour smile. “Can we get justice from them?”

“I don’t know.”

Ellie jolted when she heard Connor’s thin wails. Had he been crying this whole time? How had she missed that? She squirmed away from Quill to rush to take her son from Sara. Connor cried for a few moments, and then his arms slipped limply from her neck before he fell asleep again. She looked up at Quill. The longing on his face startled her. When he saw her staring at him, the longing was wiped away from his face, although she thought it lingered in the large, gentle hand he laid on Connor’s head.

Quill lifted his hand away from Connor’s wispy blond hair. “We should get going. Do you have your things packed?”

“No, not yet.”

“Then hurry. The sun will be going down soon, and I want us well away from here before we camp for the night.”

Mel was staring hard at Mr. Moore, hand still on her pistol butt. “What about him? We’re not going to just leave him alive and unpunished, are we? I say shoot him.”

Quill slanted a look down at Ellie. “Your call.”

Sara asked, “Will you really kill him if Ellie says to?”

“Yes.” Quill’s voice was uncompromising.

A whimper from Tommy drew Ellie’s gaze. The boy stood close to Sara, tears gleaming on his suntanned cheeks. What would happen to the boys if Mr. Moore was killed? She sighed, releasing her thirst for vengeance. “I can’t kill him, but he deserves to be punished for what he did.”

Quill nodded. “Fine. Sand, go to the village and fetch the mayor. Lance, White Horse. Take Ellie over to the house to finish packing up her things. The rest of us will stay with this murderer until the mayor comes.”

Ellie stared for a long moment at Mr. Moore, wondering what he was thinking. He didn’t look relieved. He looked angry, and the way his mouth was set made her think he held back words defiant words. Matthew stood close beside him in a truculent stance. The resemblance between father and son was deeper than just the sandy brown hair and blue eyes.

Ellie shifted Connor in her arms before turning to go back to the house. Tommy almost tripped her when he lunged to grab her waist. “Don’t leave me,” he begged in a wavering wail. “Please, please. Take me with you.”

“Tommy.” New tears stung her eyes. “I wish I could take you with me, but you belong with your father.”

“No!”

Tommy’s treble shriek rose above Mr. Moore’s bass shout. Ellie glanced back at Mr. Moore. The scowl on his face hurled disgust at his younger son.

“That brat isn’t mine,” he said with dislike plain in his voice. “Maggie, that perfect saintly wife, slept around, and that little bastard is the result. Take him, with my blessing. I don’t want him.”

Tommy’s lower lip trembled. Ellie’s eyes filled with tears when she saw hurt and hope twist the boy’s face. She looked up at Quill, silently begging him to do something. Quill went to Tommy and put his hand on the little shaking shoulder.

“What’s your name?”

“Tommy.”

“What’s your whole name?”

Tommy sniffed, agonized hope battling with the despair on his face. “Thomas McKinley Moore.”

Quill squatted to look the boy in the eye. “That used to be your name. You have a new name now: Thomas McKinley Wolfe. You are my son, and Ellie is your mother. You go up to the house with your mother and brother and help them get you packed to go to your new home.”

Tommy’s face filled with delight. “Yes, sir!”

Ellie lingered while Tommy tore back into the house, followed by Sara. “Thank you,” she whispered to Quill.

A faint flush rose to his cheeks. “You go pack.”

She stood on tiptoes to brush her lips over his. “Thank you,” she said again and walked quickly to the house.

* * * *

Their clothes were packed. Her mother’s spinning wheel, the only thing she had from her, had been disassembled and carefully wrapped in blankets to keep it safe on the journey to the den. Neal’s journals were stowed carefully in a bag. Tommy and Connor were sleeping on a mattress on the kitchen floor. It was very late, but there was one more thing Ellie wanted to do before they left.

Holding a lantern, and followed by Paint and White Horse, Ellie walked out to the small graveyard that lay between Mooreton and Moore’s Mill. Mrs. Moore and Neal were buried there, along with a dozen others. It was a little creepy in the dark, but she knew this spot well enough to not need the light of the lantern to find Neal’s grave. The headstone was small, but the words chiseled into it were plain, not yet eroded by weather.

Neal Einar Overdahl

Beloved Husband and Father

July 1, 2044-February 12, 2070

“Could you stay back?” she asked the wolves who escorted her and then waited for them to step away.

She knelt by Neal’s stone, setting the lantern on its top edge. It wasn’t just the cool night air that made her feel cold. This cold wasn’t the kind that pimpled the skin, but the kind that turned bones to lead.

“Neal, we know what happened now. You didn’t slip and fall to your death. I knew, deep inside, you wouldn’t be that careless.” The memory of the horror etched on his dead face squeezed tears out of her eyes. “Mr. Moore murdered you. He took you away from me. Away from your son. I had the gun, but I couldn’t shoot him.”

She glanced back at the distant mill. Lanterns bobbed, showing that the mayor of Mooreton had arrived. “Maybe he’ll be punished for his evil. I hope so. He deserves it. Oh, Neal.” She heard misery in her moan. “I miss you so much. I want to see you toss Connor up in the air and laugh when he squeals. I want you to hold me. I love you. I’m sorry I was mad at you for moving us here.”

Could he hear her? Neal was in heaven. Did the dead look down on their loved ones from heaven? She snuffled, searching for a handkerchief, but she hadn’t brought one. She used her sleeve to wipe her eyes. “Neal, I have a new husband now.”

What would Neal say if he could come back for five minutes? Would he be glad she and Connor were safe? Of course he would. Would he forgive her for so quickly finding physical desire for another man? That she wasn’t so sure of. No widow would stay single for long these days. In the Times Before, there had been so many women that some of them never married at all. Today there were so few women that it wasn’t unusual for a woman to be widowed and re-married on the same day. But did they all pant for their new husband’s kiss, wonder what it would be like to make love with him?