Wild Hearts Read online

  Past Sins Cast a Long Shadow

  Dallas Phillips refuses to believe her father committed suicide, even though things were tough on his farm and he was deeply in debt. When she hears he’d told a neighbor about an upcoming windfall, she grows suspicious, and her suspicion only deepens when she realizes someone is lurking in the nearby mountains after dark.

  For help, she turns to Trey Jakes, local police chief—and her former lover. As they begin to investigate, another mystery comes to light. Trey’s mother is beginning to remember events from thirty years ago, something shadowy that happened in the mountains, and Dallas’s father was there, too. Is what happened that night connected to his “suicide”? As they search for the truth, Trey and Dallas struggle to fight their attraction, but they may not be able to fend off another force—a killer who’s more than willing to kill again to make sure old secrets stay buried.

  Praise for the novels of Sharon Sala

  “Skillfully balancing suspense and romance, Sala gives readers a nonstop breath-holding adventure.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Going Once

  “Vivid, gripping…this thriller keeps the pages turning.”

  —Library Journal on Torn Apart

  “Sala’s characters are vivid and engaging.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Cut Throat

  “Sharon Sala is not only a top romance novelist, she is an inspiration for people everywhere who wish to live their dreams.”

  —John St. Augustine, host, Power!Talk Radio WDBC-AM, Michigan

  “Veteran romance writer Sala lives up to her reputation with this well-crafted thriller.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Remember Me

  “[A] well-written, fast-paced ride.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Nine Lives

  “Perfect entertainment for those looking for a suspense novel with emotional intensity.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Out of the Dark

  Also by Sharon Sala

  Forces of Nature

  GOING GONE

  GOING TWICE

  GOING ONCE

  The Rebel Ridge novels

  ’TIL DEATH

  DON’T CRY FOR ME

  NEXT OF KIN

  The Searchers

  BLOOD TRAILS

  BLOOD STAINS

  BLOOD TIES

  The Storm Front trilogy

  SWEPT ASIDE

  TORN APART

  BLOWN AWAY

  THE WARRIOR

  BAD PENNY

  THE HEALER

  CUT THROAT

  NINE LIVES

  THE CHOSEN

  MISSING

  WHIPPOORWILL

  ON THE EDGE

  “Capsized”

  DARK WATER

  OUT OF THE DARK

  SNOWFALL

  BUTTERFLY

  REMEMBER ME

  REUNION

  SWEET BABY

  Originally published as Dinah McCall

  THE RETURN

  Look for Sharon Sala’s next novel

  COLD HEARTS

  available soon from MIRA Books

  SHARON SALA

  Wild Hearts

  Childhood sweethearts are the first and the best, because the love is new and untainted. Even though most of them do not carry through to adulthood and become the life partner you will have, they all hold a special place in our hearts.

  I’m dedicating this book to my first love, my Bobby, who reappeared in my life when I needed him most. I had eight of the most wonderful years of my adult life with him before I lost him to cancer. He was my first love, and he will be my last love.

  Some things are impossible to replace.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Mystic, West Virginia

  May 1980

  The sky was as dark as a witch’s heart, the smells of whiskey and sex as strong inside the titty-pink Cadillac as the vomit in the floorboard behind the driver. The speedometer was pegged out at a hundred and ten, and still the headlights of the car behind them kept gaining.

  Eighteen-year-old Connie Bartlett’s fingers were curled around the steering wheel of her brand-new graduation present, her eyes wide and fixed on the white stripe down the middle of the blacktop, and she was screaming at the top of her lungs.

  Her boyfriend, Dick Phillips, was on his knees, leaning over the seat and looking out the back window. Like Connie, he could see the headlights coming closer.

  “Faster, Connie, faster! He’s gonna catch us!”

  “It won’t go any faster!” she cried.

  She swerved toward the right, then swerved back toward the left, tossing her passengers from one side of the car to the other. She was trying to follow the white stripe down the middle of the highway, but she was driving drunk, something her daddy had told her never to do.

  In the backseat, Betsy Parr was three beers and most of a fifth of Jack Daniel’s drunk, down on her hands and knees in the floorboard, puking up her guts. She always felt carsick in the backseat. Being drunk and dancing with death only made it worse.

  Her boyfriend, Paul Jackson, was passed out above her, drunk from the other three beers from Betsy’s six-pack and the rest of the bottle of Jack Daniel’s, oblivious to the drama and the danger.

  Dick was pounding the seat and crying now. “He’s gaining! He’s gaining! He’ll kill us, too. What are we gonna do?”

  Betsy groaned as another wave of nausea swept over her, but before she could follow the urge to puke again, the car fishtailed, throwing her against the door at her back. Too scared to look up, she began beating her fists on the back of Connie’s seat.

  “Oh, my God...Connie, stop, please stop! You’re going to kill us.”

  “We can’t!” Dick yelled. “He saw all of us. We have to get to the cops first or he’ll finger us for what he did!”

  “We’re drunk. They’ll blame it on us anyway,” Betsy moaned.

  “Shut up! Shut up!” Connie screamed. “You saw what he did! We all saw it!”

  Betsy couldn’t believe this was happening. Twelve long years of slogging through an education all the way to their high school graduation, and three hours after getting their diplomas they were going to die. Her only consolation, even though she’d had to get drunk to do it, was that she wouldn’t die a virgin.

  All of a sudden the car began to slide sideways.

  “Connie! Take your foot off the gas!” Dick screamed.

  Instead, Connie jerked the wheel in the other direction, and suddenly they were airborne. Her foot was still on the accelerator, the engine was roaring like the backwash from a jet, but the sensation of flying, if only for a moment, was real.

  Paul Jackson woke up just as the wheels left the blacktop to find Betsy’s foot in the middle of his chest.

  “What the hell?” he groaned, and then leaned over and vomited all over the both of them just as the pink Cadillac went nose-first into a tree.

  Connie went through the windshield, landing facedown on the hood as steam from the broken radiator rose up around her.

  Dick’s head slammed against the dash, cutting a gash across his forehead as he slumped down
on the floor, pinned between the dash and the seat as it crumpled around him.

  Betsy was ejected through the back window onto the trunk and then bounced off onto the ground a short distance away, awash in the exhaust from the tailpipe.

  The back door popped open on impact, throwing Paul out against a nearby boulder, breaking his arm and his shoulder, and cracking his skull.

  To add insult to injury, a dead limb knocked loose from the impact dropped, landing on Connie’s back, although it was overkill. She was already gone.

  A few moments later, headlights swept across the scene of the wreck as the driver of the other car finally caught up. He slowed down only long enough to assess the scene and assume they were dead, then disappeared into the night.

  * * *

  Betsy Parr woke up to bright lights and heart-stopping pain. She could hear her mother’s voice; the fear in it was palpable. She heard her father, and then the sound of choking and moaning. It took a moment for her to realize she was the one making that noise. She heard her mother cry out, begging them to do something, and then the pain was gone as she sank into unconsciousness.

  * * *

  By midmorning, news of the accident spread through town like wildfire. One of Mystic High School’s brand-new graduates was dead, and three more critically injured.

  Everyone was in shock, including the driver of the second car, who had been so sure they were dead. He thought about running. He thought about coming out with a story to lay blame on them first, and then decided to wait and see what happened. They could still die.

  And when all the shock and drama was over, and the rush of gossip had long since cleared, waiting was what saved him.

  Connie Bartlett took what she knew to the grave, and the three others had been so drunk, and then suffered such critical head wounds, that later on when they were questioned, none of them remembered anything after receiving their diplomas. The ensuing three hours of their lives had been erased.

  His future had been saved by a quirk of fate, which made everything else he’d done worth it.

  One

  The cackle of hens and the occasional squawk of a pissed-off rooster were the beginning to Dick Phillips’s day as he went about his morning chores. He opened the coop and began scattering chicken feed, laughing at the rush that ensued as he went in to gather the eggs.

  A few years back his wife, Marcy, had got an itch to raise chickens, so he’d built a coop and bought her a few hens to make her happy, and then she died. Afterward, he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of them, so they stayed. As time passed, the flock grew, and now, with over forty laying hens, he was selling the surplus to regular customers, who came to the farm to pick up eggs for their family use.

  He took the fresh eggs down to the barn to what he called the egg room. He was favoring his right shoulder. He’d taken a bad fall last week and was certain he’d torn something vital. He couldn’t lift his arm above his head, and it hurt to carry anything, although there was still work to be done. He stood at the worktable, sorting, cleaning and crating eggs, and then stored them in a small walk-in cooler at the back of the room.

  He’d just walked out into the breezeway and was getting ready to feed his cows when he heard a car. He paused in the doorway, absently scratching at the old scar on his forehead, and then raised his hand in greeting when he recognized the driver, then eyed the large sack he was carrying, thinking he was about to make a big sale.

  “Hey, how goes it?” he called. “You comin’ after eggs?”

  “A couple of dozen, please.”

  Dick turned to get the eggs from the cooler, unaware that the man had reached into the sack and taken out a long braided rope with a noose at the end. Dick heard the footsteps behind him, but before he could turn, the noose was around his neck.

  The man gave the rope a hard yank, and Dick fell backward, landing hard on the back of his head, and at the same time reinjuring his shoulder and cutting off his air. Dick was in shock, uncertain what was happening. His ears were ringing and he couldn’t think what to do. Unaware of what was happening behind him, he began fumbling with the noose.

  The man had tied a weight to the other end of the rope, and when he threw it up, it sailed over the rafter and right back into his hands as if he’d practiced the move for days. Then he took off running toward the loft, and when the rope tightened, Dick was yanked off his feet so hard that he momentarily blacked out.

  It was the reprieve the killer needed. He reached the steps leading to the loft and began climbing them hand over fist with the rope in his teeth. He glanced down once, and as he did, his heart skipped a beat. Dick was not only conscious but struggling to get to his feet. With no time to spare, the killer threaded the rope through a step and then jumped.

  As he went down, Dick went up, high enough that his feet were dangling almost two feet off the concrete floor below.

  Dick was moaning and kicking as the man wrapped the rope once around his waist for added leverage, then pulled Dick even higher as he ran back toward the ladder and tied off the rope.

  Now Dick was dangling almost six feet from the ground. His face was turning blue, his eyes were bulging and his arms were flailing as he clawed desperately at the rope, trying to relieve the pressure.

  “Die, damn it,” the man muttered. And then, in a fit of impatience, he made a run for Dick’s legs and jumped. As he did, he grabbed hold of Dick’s ankles, and when he came down with all his body weight, Dick’s neck broke with a pop.

  It was done.

  The killer stepped back, looking all around the area to make sure he’d left nothing of himself behind, then pulled out his pocketknife and cut off the weight, taking it with him as he left.

  Long after the sound of his car had faded away, the chickens still clucked, the rooster crowed and the cows were still waiting to be fed.

  * * *

  Betsy Jakes had her cookbook out, going down the list of ingredients she needed to make her famous Italian cream cake. Tomorrow was her son Trey’s birthday, and it was his favorite dessert. She glanced down at the recipe, writing needed ingredients onto her grocery list, and made a note to stop by Dick’s house to buy eggs before she went home.

  She had known Dick for most of her life, and in her youth had even survived a deadly crash with him the night they graduated from high school. His girlfriend, Connie, who’d been driving that night, died in the wreck, while Dick, Betsy and her boyfriend, Paul, survived. Even though life had taken them down separate paths, they remained bonded by the past.

  Betsy checked out her appearance, making a note to pick up some hair color. Her roots were beginning to show. Then she combed her curly shoulder-length hair and fastened it off at the nape of her neck. There were a few more wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth where she smiled, but her brown eyes still danced when she was laughing. Her chin had always been a little too square and with age was beginning to take on a bit of a bulldog look. She frowned, thinking she could lose about ten pounds and get rid of that, and then let the thought go. She was a satisfied widow with no desire to ever marry again. Why bother?

  After changing from her work clothes into a clean pair of jeans and a yellow pullover blouse, she made the trip into Mystic in fine fashion. She was listening to her favorite radio station, rockin’ to the oldies, when a Bob Seger song came on the radio. Grinning from the memories it evoked, she turned up the volume and sang along.

  When she finally drove into Mystic, she glanced toward the police station to see if Trey’s cruiser was there. He had been chief for over five years, and she was proud of what he’d become. He reminded her so much of her husband, Beau, and she wished daily that Beau had lived to see his children grow up. But the cruiser was gone, which meant he was out and about. Maybe she would see him before she left town.

  She shopped quickly, rejecting an invitation to lunch with one of her friends because she was anxious to get home and start the cake. Still, she took time to pull into the drive-through
of a local sandwich shop called the French Fry to get a cold drink on the way home. While she was waiting for her drink she finally saw Trey drive by and wondered what interesting stuff was going on in Mystic, and made a mental note to call him later.

  “Here’s your Pepsi,” the clerk said, and leaned out the window to hand the cup and straw to Betsy.

  “Many thanks,” Betsy said, and waved as she drove away.

  She was sipping on the Pepsi and listening to the Rolling Stones when she remembered the eggs and turned right at the next section-line road.

  Dick’s farm was small, but it was a beauty, backing up to one of the many mountains that surrounded their little town. She eyed the climbing roses on the trellis against the side of the house, remembering how Dick’s wife, Marcy, had loved her flowers. She missed Marcy Phillips. She’d been a good friend.

  She parked on the outside of the yard fence and then knocked on the door. When Dick didn’t answer, she looked around to make sure his pickup was out back in the garage, which it was. The front door was unlocked, so she opened it a bit and leaned in.

  “Dick! Hey, Dick, it’s me, Betsy! Are you here?”

  With no answer from inside, she looked toward the barn. She could hear the cows bawling and nodded to herself, thinking that was where he would be. Still focused on the long process of making that cake, she ran back down the steps and headed toward the barn with long strides.

  The barn had been built over a hundred years earlier, in a style similar to Pennsylvania Dutch. The two-story structure loomed against the landscape with a loft as large as the barn itself. It had a fairly new coat of barn-red paint on the outer walls, while the cross-boards on the old shutters had been painted white. The pasture was fenced off from the house and barnyard and spread out toward the trees ringing the mountain at its back.

  “Dick! Dick! It’s me, Betsy! Where are you?” she yelled, but got no answer.

  She was looking toward the pasture as she hurried along, thinking he would come walking out of the trees any minute. Then she heard a dog bark and frowned. Dick didn’t have dogs. She wondered if someone was hunting on his property and turned her head to look.