Exit Strategy by Shirlee McCoy

Author:Shirlee McCoy [McCoy, Shirlee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christian, Love Inspired Suspense, Romance, Contemporary, Suspense, Fiction
ISBN: 9781488036545
Google: -zZ-DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2019-09-15T13:51:43.357000+00:00

TEN

“I love you. I’m sorry.”

Black words on white paper that had been stained with blood. Cyrus knew that’s what it was. He wasn’t sure that Lark did.

She turned the paper over, her hand steady, her breathing even. Whatever she was feeling, she wasn’t going to give Elijah the satisfaction of seeing her reaction to the note.

He was glad.

The man was a charlatan, and he needed to be ousted from his position of power.

“Well?” Elijah demanded, his voice booming into the silence.

“He didn’t kill himself,” Lark said, sliding the note back into the envelope and putting it in the box.

“That note says different,” Elijah snapped. “I would have given it to you weeks ago, if you’d been honest about why you’d returned to Amos Way.”

“Like you’ve been honest about what you’re doing in the compound?” Cyrus demanded, and Elijah turned toward him, eyes blazing with the kind of zeal usually associated with delusional fanatics. Cyrus had thought Elijah to be a schemer, a fake, a man who was using people to gain wealth, who had become a religious leader to exert whatever flimsy control he could.

Maybe he’d been wrong.

Maybe the guy was nuts.

“I,” Elijah spat, “do not need to answer to you. My God is my judge. He is my—”

“I think it’s time for you to go, Elijah,” Sheriff Johnson said wearily.

“You’re kicking me out of your office? After I took you in? Tried to get you on the right path. Tried to teach you God’s—”

“I’m kicking you out. I suggest that you stay away from Lark. No contact at all.”

“I do not force my ideals and faith on others.” Elijah seemed to have reeled himself in, gotten his emotions under control.

“This isn’t about your faith,” Lark said, her gaze on the box and the envelope that was in it. “It’s about truth. I’m going to find it, Elijah. I’m not going to stop until I do.”

Elijah stiffened, his shoulders straightening beneath the crisp white tunic he always wore. “May God’s will will be done.”

“You don’t know God,” Lark continued, and Cyrus would have told her not to yank the tail of a rattler, but she had a right to speak her mind. She needed to speak it, and this was the safest place to do it. “If you did, Joshua would still be alive. Ethan would be alive. There are probably others. People who are buried in the woods somewhere, dead because you know nothing about love and everything about selfishness and greed.”

Elijah moved so fast that Cyrus barely had time to react. He just managed to snag the man’s wrist before his hand hit Lark’s cheek.

“That,” Cyrus growled, twisting Elijah’s arm up behind his back, “was a mistake.”

“Trouble?” Boone asked from the doorway.

“Nothing that I can’t handle.”

“I’ll handle it,” Sheriff Johnson said, his tone flat. “Let him go.”

Cyrus hesitated.

What he wanted to do was teach Elijah a lesson he wouldn’t forget.

But getting himself arrested wasn’t going to do Lark any good.

He let Elijah go, positioning himself between him and Lark.

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