Wheres the laundry room? she asked, tugging her robe more tightly around her as Nixs dark-eyed gaze dropped to where the robe lapels gaped open to reveal her thin nightgown.
His gaze snapped back up to meet hers. Just off the kitchen.
Ah.
Was the water hot enough?
She nodded. Bathrooms amazing. What is this place, one of those tourist cabins?
Actually, I think it may be, Nix answered, giving the chest of drawers a final swipe of the dust rag. Back about ten years ago, some guy bought up a lot of this land and built a bunch of cabins, hoping to bring more tourism to this area. But its just too far off the beaten path, and Bitterwood doesnt have enough attractions to compete with places like Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge or Bryson City. So the guy had to sell off a bunch of these cabins for a song just to keep his real-estate business from going belly-up. Doyle probably got a decent deal on the place. Is he buying or renting, do you know?
Buying, she answered. He said it wouldnt look good for the chief of police to rent a place. Might make it seem like he wasnt planning to stick around for the long haul. Bad optics.
Nixs grimace suggested he wasnt a fan of that sort of public-service politics. Dana didnt like it much herself, though being a federal law enforcement agent meant that some level of politics was unavoidable.
Thanks for cleaning up, she added, waving her hand toward the much neater room.
Not a problem.
As Nix took a step toward the bedroom door, Dana caught his arm, stilling his movement. He looked down at her hand, then slowly lifted his gaze back to her face. Heat radiated from his tall, broad-shouldered body, washing over her in a flood that set her own skin tingling.
Yes? His voice was like silk over sandpaper.
You know something about my mother, dont you?
Nix recoiled slightly, the movement clearly involuntary. Dana stared at him, watched the color suffuse his face as his gaze slid.
Her pulse notched upward, fueled by a river of dread flowing through her veins to settle in the center of her chest. She took her own step backward, until her knees hit the edge of Doyles bed and she sat abruptly, curling her fingers into the bedspread.
What did my mother do? she asked, her voice tight with alarm.
Nix made himself look at her, his dark gaze unfathomable. If the story Ive heard all my life is true, she killed her own baby and tried to steal someone elses.
Chapter Four
Danas face went pale with shock at Nixs words. She stared at him, first in stunned silence, then in a slowly simmering anger that chased the pallor from her face, replacing it with splotches of high color in her cheeks.
Thats ludicrous.
He didnt know what to say. He couldnt actually vouch for any of the details. All he knew was what the older people in his small community had whispered for years, quietly enough that they could pretend discretion while knowing full well that their children were listening and absorbing the cautionary tale of the teenage girl who got herself pregnant, got away with murder and eventually got herself run out of town for her sins.
My mother was a wonderful, kind, smart and decent woman.
Im sure she was, Nix agreed, though not with enough conviction to drive the fury from Danas flashing eyes.
You couldnt possibly know anything about her. She left here before you were born.
Yeah, about a year before I was born, he agreed.
She looked away from him, as if she couldnt stand looking at him any longer. He took that as his cue to leave, backing toward the door.
Wait, she snapped.
He faltered to a stop.
She looked at him again, her expression more composed, though distress roiled behind her eyes. Please sit. She waved her hand toward the armchair by the window, next to a table holding a reading lamp and a small stack of books.
He sat in the chiefs chair and took a bracing breath before he looked at Dana again, steeling himself against her anger and pain. But she seemed to have herself completely under control now, her expression back to cool neutral, her eyes mirrors reflecting her surroundings without revealing anything that lay beneath.
Where did you hear that story about my mother? she asked.
She wasnt going to let it go, he saw. Not that he should have expected her to. After all, she hadnt chosen a career in law enforcement because she was incurious or prone to dodging conflict.
Its one of those stories you grow up hearing, he answered carefully.
Like monsters in the closet and bogeymen under the bed? she asked, only a hint of sarcasm breaking the calm surface of her composure.
Yes, he admitted. Like that.
So, tell me. What was the story? How did she kill her child?
Her baby, he corrected. He thought he saw a quick flinch, a slight tightening in the corners of her eyes. She was unmarried. Pregnant. Went into labor and someone took her to the hospital in Maryville for delivery. Everything went okay and the baby was born. He faltered to a stop, knowing the worst part of the story, the part that made any normal person recoil, was yet to come.
Did she kill the baby at the hospital or at home? Dana asked, her tone businesslike, as if she were interviewing a witness to a crime.
At the hospital. The nurse had brought him for feeding and left him there with her. As the story goes, she claims she fell asleep and someone switched out her live baby for an already dead one. But nobody saw anything.
Nobody saw anyone carrying a dead baby into the room or carrying a live one out, you mean.
Right. Nix shook his head. Dana, I dont know that any of this is true. Its just a story.
Maybe. She shrugged. Maybe not. What happened when the unmarried girl discovered the baby in the bassinet was dead?
She started screaming. He swallowed a lump that had formed in his throat as he watched Danas face grow even stonier. She kept screaming at the nurses that it wasnt her baby, but of course, it had to be. Nobody had gone into her room.
That anyone witnessed.
Hed let his gaze drift away from her face but snapped it back at her words. That anyone witnessed.
Whats the next part of this cautionary tale? Her voice held a minute trace of sarcasm, so tiny he wasnt sure whether it was really there or he was just reading that tone into her words.
The hospital called in a psychiatrist to calm her down. She finally settled down and started to cooperate with the hospital staff, who were trying to make arrangements for the babys burial. The nurse who saw her just before all hell broke loose supposedly swore she seemed to be sad but acting normally enough for a girl whod just lost her newborn baby.
Dana was silent and very still for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was faint and strained. And then?
The nurses supposedly heard screams coming from a room down the hall on the same floor. A woman screaming that someone had stolen her baby. The story goes, they locked down the hospital and finally found the unmarried girl and the missing baby in the hospital basement. She was trying to take him out a service exit.
Who were the babys parents?
Who were the babys parents?
You mean the baby that lived?
She nodded.
I dont know, he admitted. That was never part of the story I heard.
They only identified the girl?
He nodded. Crazy Tallie Cumberland, mad as a hare and wicked as the rest of her family. Killed her own baby and tried to steal another. Better take care and not let a Cumberland look you in the eye, or youll turn out crazy and wicked, too.
Lovely.
Im sorry. I guess its not so entertaining a legend when youre on the Cumberland end of things.
Its also completely impossible, Dana said in a low, flat tone. My mother couldnt have killed her own child under any circumstances. She was perfectly sane, perfectly rational and as loving and protective a mother as a child could have hoped for.
Im sure youre right, Nix said.
No, youre not. She pulled the collar of her robe more tightly around herself. You never knew her.
No, I didnt. Nix stood. Its late. Were tired. Lets just get some sleep tonight while we can. Morning will make everything look better.
At least, he hoped it would.
But long after he retreated to the guest room, he remained awake, staring at the moon-painted ceiling over the bed and wondering just how much of the story hed told Dana was true.
And how much of it, true or otherwise, had led to Doyle Masseys brand-new brakes failing on the curve just past Purgatory Bridge?
* * *
LOSING HER PARENTS had been one of the most devastating moments of Dana Masseys life. Shed talked to her mother on the phone only a couple of hours before the accident, planning for a birthday party for David, the baby of the family, which was to have taken place the next month. David was turning eighteen, a significant milestone, and Tallie Massey had tasked Dana with finding a particular set of books David wanted for his birthday. They were obscure books on South American agricultural technology, in the original Spanish, and neither of her parents had a clue where to start looking.
Dana had been a junior in college, entirely too full of herself and far too certain she knew everything there was to know about any subject of importance.
Stupid, stupid girl.
The call had come in the middle of the night. It had been David, the baby, the one who felt everything like a pierce to the heart, trying so hard to be strong and adult, to break the news to her gently.
But there was no easy way to tell someone her parents were dead.
Doyle had beaten her home by an hour. Shed found him and David sitting in silence in the well-worn den of their family home, staring at the phone as if waiting for more bad news to crash down on them. Theyd looked up in unison as she entered the room, just staring at her with shattered expressions and heartsick eyes. Shed opened her arms and David had run to her, a lost little boy in a young mans body.
Sheriff Morgan delivered the news himself, Doyle had told Dana later, after theyd coaxed David into getting some sleep before morning came and the food-and-sympathy visits started. David said hed offered to stick around, but our little brother didnt want us to think he was still a kid.
Oh, David, Dana thought, staring at the ceiling of her brothers bedroom. What kind of man would you have been?
Morning light was beginning to seep through the curtains, just a hint of pearly-gray in the otherwise unrelenting darkness, but it gave her an excuse to get out of bed and get her mind out of the bleak past for a while.
There was a light on in the kitchen, the sound of water running. Figuring an intruder wouldnt stop for a drink of water, she decided against going back into the bedroom for her Glock and entered the kitchen to find Walker Nix scooping coffee grounds into a filter. He turned at the sound of her bare footsteps on the hardwood floor. Did I wake you?
No. She stifled a yawn and settled on one of the stools in front of the breakfast bar. Youre up early.
I have to go home and get ready for work.
Right.
He looked at her over his shoulder, his dark eyes hooded. You want some coffee?
She nodded. Nice and strong, I hope?
Of course. His lips twitched as he reached into the cabinet over the coffeemaker and pulled out a couple of large mugs. Did you get any sleep?
She grimaced. That obvious, huh?
You look fine. He actually sounded as if he believed what he was saying.
Youre a better diplomat than you look, she murmured with a smile.
He left the coffee percolating and pulled up the stool beside hers, resting one arm on the bar and turning to face her. I want you to forget what I told you last night about your mother. I have no proof that any of it happened, and what passes as truth, in these hills, can be as flexible as taffy.
I know it didnt happen the way you heard it, she said with confidence. But something happened to my mother when she was living here in Bitterwood. Theres no other reason why she wouldve hidden her past so thoroughly from us for all these years.
You didnt even know she was from here?
I knew she was from the Smoky Mountains. That she was born in Tennessee and didnt meet my father until she was nearly twenty and working at a bait shop in Terrebonne. She told us she didnt have any family left, and no reason to go back to Tennessee for visits. Thats why we were sort of surprised when she and my dad decided to drive to Tennessee for their vacation.
Do you think your father knew about your mothers past?
She thought about the question for a moment. I think so. They were best friends as well as spouses. They didnt keep secrets from each other.
But they never told you or your brother anything about it?
No. She hadnt thought much about why her mothers past was a blank. It had simply always been that way, for as long as she remembered. I think Dad guarded her secret because thats what she wanted. But he must have known.
She didnt leave you anything, a written journal or something that might have explained the blanks in her past?
No. Nothing. She wasnt expecting to die, so she hadnt prepared.
My mother got real sick when I was sixteen, Nix said after a moment of silence. Breast cancer. She just wanted to live at least long enough to get me and my brother out of high school. Nixs smile was tinged with a hint of exasperation. Lavelle had to be pushed through that final semester, kicking and screaming.
Younger brothers, Dana murmured, biting back the urge to cry.
The good news is, she beat the cancer. Twenty-year survivor as of January.
She felt a flutter of relief. Thats wonderful.
He nodded. The chief says youre the oldest.
He likes to remind people of that a lot. Lucky me.
If it makes you feel any better, you look younger.
Ten years ago, I might have smacked you for saying that, she said with a grin. But now Ill just say thanks. And suggest you might want to get your eyes checked.
He looked at her for a long moment, his scrutiny straightforward and a little unnerving. You have to know youre a very attractive woman.
She supposed she knew it, although the deeper into her thirties she went, the more she had a sense of time ticking past her at a quicker rate. Shed put her career first, her personal life a distant second, and shed been okay with that order of things, because shed always figured thered be time, before her youth was spent, to change her priorities.