Ill make it easier for you, she said quietly, her gaze dropping to the collar of his shirt. The day Johnnys body showed up on Smoky Ridge, Id spoken to a lawyer about filing for divorce.
The words were spoken flatly, but Dalton didnt miss the tremble of vulnerability that underlay them. Not a broken heart, he assessed silently, but a deeply shattered pride.
I didnt know. Im sorry.
She gave an impatient toss of her dark curls. Just tell me why you think Johnny was involved with Cortland.
Because he was involved with Cortlands secretary, Dalton answered. They were having an affair. And she thinks he was using her to get closer to Wayne Cortland.
Chapter Three
Briar didnt flinch. She didnt tremble or cry or do anything that Dalton Hale was clearly bracing himself to deal with as he lowered the boom.
But inside she died a little, another tiny piece of herself ripping away to join the other little scraps of soul shrapnel that had come unmoored during the slow unraveling of her marriage.
How long? she asked, pleased at the uninflected tone of her voice.
She says about three months.
That was about right, she thought, remembering the growing distance between Johnny and her in the months before his murder. In fact, shed long suspected he might have been unfaithful during her early pregnancy, when her normally sturdy body had betrayed her with dizzy spells and five months of near-constant nausea before shed regained her strength for the last four months.
Johnny had liked the idea of having a baby, but the process had left him feeling peevish and neglected. As if the whole thing should have been about him and not the baby she was desperately trying to carry to a healthy birth.
In fact, hed reacted like an overgrown baby himself. It had marked the beginning of the long, tortuous end of their twelve-year romance.
Mrs. Blackwood?
She realized she hadnt responded to him, hadnt even moved a muscle, her body and mind focused inward to her own unexpected pain. She gathered the tatters of her wits to ask, What makes her think he was using her to get to Cortland?
Do you really want that much detail? he asked, not unkindly.
She supposed not. At least, not right now, when she was still processing another ugly piece of truth about the only man shed ever loved. Did she offer any proof other than her own feelings? The question came out with a hint of cold disdain. Not an attractive sound, but she couldnt unsay it.
Im not at liberty
Get back to me when you are. She turned and started walking away once more, this time not stopping when he called her name.
She entered the waiting room, where only Nix and Logan remained. Logan lay curled up in the chair beside Nix, fast asleep.
Everybody else had to go, Nix said quietly, rising as he spotted her. Work comes bright and early in the morning.
For you, too, she said with a faint smile, hoping her inner turmoil wasnt showing. Nix was the closest thing she had to a brother, and if he thought for a moment that Dalton Hale had upset her, he might go looking to mete out a little Smoky Mountain justice on her behalf.
This is my work.
He opened his arms and she slipped into his brotherly embrace, glad that his deepening relationship with the chiefs sister hadnt changed the warmth of their own long-standing friendship. Right now she needed a friend in her corner, someone whod back her up without asking any hard questions. Aunt Jennys probably not going to be up for any more questions tonight. You can go home and get some sleep.
He rubbed her back. You and Logan are coming home with me.
She looked up at him. Danas okay with that?
Shes making up the sofa bed as we speak.
Dont screw up and let that one go, she said. I like her.
Yeah, I kind of like her, too, Nix murmured.
As she started to pull away from his embrace, movement in the doorway caught her eye. Dalton Hale stood there, watching her and Nix through narrowed eyes. She let go of Nix and turned to face him, lifting her chin. Later, Mr. Hale.
He gave a short nod and walked away.
You sure hes not giving you trouble?
No trouble, she lied, turning to ease her sleeping son out of the chair and into her arms.
* * *
DALTON TRIED TO stretch his legs, but the cab of the Chevy S-10 pickup truck was too small to allow for much motion. Hed wanted to buy a big, spacious luxury carhe had money, damn it, and it wasnt a sin to spend it on comfort sometimes. But his campaign manager, Bill Murphy, had pointed out that he was running for office in a county where many people still fed themselves and their families with wild game and the fruits of their homestead gardens. An American-made pickup truck said Dalton was one of them, just another homegrown Smoky Mountain boy. The smaller, more fuel-efficient S-10 said he was environmentally conscious and a protector of the land they all loved.
But the Infiniti M35 hed wanted to buy instead of the S-10 would have said he was a tall man with a good income who could afford not to have cramps in his legs to appear as if he were something he wasnt.
Serving the people of his county shouldnt have been so damned hard. Whatever people like Doyle Massey and Briar Blackwood thought, his motives for wanting the job of head county prosecutor werent entirely self-serving. He supposed it might be seen as a stepping-stone to state office and maybe national office one day, but if that were his only reason for wanting the job, he would have given up a long time ago. He wasnt a politician by nature. He supposed, in a sense, that trait was one he and Briar Blackwood shared in common.
Sugarcoating things had never come naturally to him.
Her house was dark and quiet. She wasnt there, of course; she worked the five-to-midnight shift at the police stationrookie hours, his clerk had called it with a laugh when hed asked the man to learn her work hours.
Her absence was why he had come here at night to keep watch over her cabin, to see if the people whod broken in the night before were of a mind to give it another try. He wasnt even sure she was staying here tonight; shed stayed the previous night with Walker Nix at his Cherokee Cove cabin about a mile up the mountain. He assumed, though he couldnt know for sure, that Dana Massey had stayed there, as well, marking her territory.
Thats unfair, a small voice in the back of his head admonished him. His mothers voice, he recognizednot the troubled girl whod apparently given birth to him but the sweet-natured, softhearted woman named Nina Hale whod raised him from infancy. She was his mother. Tallie Cumberland was an inconvenient fact of biology.
He hadnt talked to his mother in a couple of days. He needed to remedy that fact, because of all the people involved in the Tallie Cumberland scandal, she was the most fragile and innocent of all. Shed lost as much as Dalton hadher husband and father were in jail, looking at spending years behind bars, and shed learned that the son shed loved even before his birth had died in his hospital bassinet thirty-seven years ago.
He checked his watch. Only a little after nine. Shed probably be awake still, all alone in that big rambling house in Edgewood. He pulled out his cell phone and hit the speed dial for her number.
He checked his watch. Only a little after nine. Shed probably be awake still, all alone in that big rambling house in Edgewood. He pulled out his cell phone and hit the speed dial for her number.
His mother answered on the second ring. Dalton?
Hi, Mom.
Ive been meaning to call you all day, she said, her voice soft with badly veiled anxiety. Your fathers lawyer called this morning. He wants me to talk to Paul about taking the plea deal. Your father doesnt want to do it. You know how he can be when he sets his mind on something.
Like covering up a fifteen-year-old murder and taking potshots at a woman asking inconvenient questions, he thought. Hed never speak those thoughts aloud, of course. He loved his mother dearly, but she was no Briar Blackwood, able to take emotional body blows without batting an eye.
I know you want him out of prison as early as possible, he said gently. But I respect that he feels the need to pay for what he did.
He was just trying to protect us, she said softly. You know thats all he cared about. Tell me you know that, Dalton.
I know that, he said, and hoped she didnt hear the doubt.
Please talk to him. He wont let me visit him at the jail, but hell talk to you. I know he really wants to talk to you.
Guilt sliced another piece out of his conscience. He hadnt gone to see his father or his grandfather in a month, ever since the truth about what theyd done had finally gotten past his denial. Outrage at Doyle and Dana Massey destroying his family hadnt gone away; hed just added fury at his father and grandfather to the toxic mix.
It wasnt healthy, feeling so angry all the time. He just hadnt yet figured out how to let go of the anger. He was beginning to wonder if he ever would.
Ill think about it, he said, because he didnt think he could sell a lie on that particular topic, not even to his mother, who wanted to believe they could somehow patch up their shattered lives and move forward as if none of it had ever happened.
I wouldnt mind seeing you soon, too, she added softly.
Ill come by soon, he promised. Well have dinner.
Ill make shrimp creole. Your favorite.
It hadnt been his favorite since he was eight years old and discovered the joy of Italian-sausage pizza, but he kept that fact to himself. Cant wait.
I love you, Dalton.
He closed his eyes, swallowing the ache in his throat. Love you, too, Mom. Ill call you tomorrow and well figure out when I can make it for dinner. He slid his phone back in his pocket and settled down to watch Briar Blackwoods darkened cabin.
* * *
BY THE TIME her patrol shift ended at midnight, Briar had begun to wish shed taken up the chiefs offer of a night off to recover from the previous evenings excitement. Despite the recent rise in crime in the county, the Bitterwood P.D. night shift wasnt exactly a date with danger.
Shed answered exactly two calls during her seven-hour shift, and one of them had been a false alarm. The other had been a car crash on Old Purgatory Road near the bridge, but even that had turned out to be more paperwork than a daring rescue. Two patrons at Smoky Joes Tavern had tried to turn out of the parking lot at the same time, crashing fenders. Neither had registered as high as .08 on the Breathalyzer, so shed written up a report and left it to them to sort out the insurance issues.
When she dropped by Nixs cabin to pick up her son and the bag of clothes shed packed for the overnight stay, Nix was waiting up for her. You can stay here another night, he said when he opened the door for her.
No, I cant. She squeezed his arm and smiled. Got to get back on the horse again.
A cabin break-in isnt exactly the same thing as getting tossed from a pony. Plus, youll have to wake up the little man.
Too late to worry about that, she murmured as she heard her son calling her name from down the hall. She followed the sound to the spare room, where Nix had set up the sofa bed for Logan, piling pillows around him to keep him from rolling too close to the edge. Logan looked sleepy and cranky, but the watery smile he flashed when he caught sight of her face made her heart melt into a sticky little pool of motherly love in the center of her chest. Mama.
You ready to sleep in your own bed tonight? She plucked him from the tangle of sheets and buried her nose in his neck, reveling in the soft baby smell of him.
Yep, he answered with an exaggerated nod that banged his little forehead against her chin. Ow! He giggled as he rubbed his forehead.
Watch where you put that noggin, mister, she answered with a laugh of her own, pressing a kiss against his fingers. Lets go home, okay?
Ill get his things. Nix picked up the scattered toys shed packed for Logan while she carried him out to the front room. Nix carried the two small backpacks for her and put them in the front seat of the Jeep while she strapped Logan into his car seat in the back.
If you decide youd rather come back here, no matter what time it is, you pack up the little fellow and come on back. Ill keep the sofa bed ready. Nix reached through the open back door and gave Logan a head ruffle. Logan grinned up at him and patted his curls back down.
Ill keep that in mind, she said, although nothing short of a full-on assault was going to drive her out of her own house. She wasnt going to play the damsel in distress, not even for someone like Nix, who had only her best interests at heart.
Shed made too many decisions in her life already based on what other people wanted her to do. She wasnt going to ignore her own instincts any longer.
Still, her steely resolve took a hit when Logans sleepy voice piped up from the backseat as she turned onto the winding road to her cabin. Mama, are the mean men gonna be there tonight? I dont like them.
She put the brakes on, slowing the Jeep to a standstill in the middle of the deserted road. I dont like them either, she admitted, beginning to question her motives for taking her son back to the cabin so soon after the break-in. Was she willfully putting him in danger just to bolster her own desire to stand on her own two feet?
But she couldnt tuck her tail and run away from their home. It was one of the few things she could call her own in the whole world. Her great-grandfather had built the cabin over a hundred years ago with wood hed chopped himself and the sweat of his own brow. Her grandfather had added to it over the yearsindoor plumbing, extra rooms as the family had expanded. When he had died, hed left the place to Briars mother, whod deeded it to Briar as a wedding gift.
It was one of the few things she had left now of her mother. That cabin and twenty-four years of good memories.
She couldnt let fear drive her away from that legacy. For her own sake and especially for Logans.
I wont let the bad men scare you anymore, she said firmly, hoping she was telling the truth. Because as much as shed tried to hide it the night before at the hospital, Dalton Hales words had weighed heavily on her. Not the thought of Johnnys infidelityshe may have been dismayed by the information, but she hadnt been surprised. But the idea that he might have gotten himself tangled up in Wayne Cortlands criminal activitiesthat was the notion that had nagged her every waking hour since Hale first brought up the subject.