The Price He Paid

by Jean Brashear

  More and more, she didn’t believe he’d started the fight with Mickey Carson. So why was he fighting her at every step when the deepest yearning of his life had to be freedom?

  Such a tangle, their pasts and their presents. You don’t have enough strikes against you, so you jump right into a lost cause? Ted’s questions lingered. But if anything in the world supported her gut sense that he was innocent, that almost-kiss did. For precious moments, they’d been David and Callie again, the connection between them alive and more powerful than ever, from one single touch.

  She was reminded of their first kiss years before, how awkward it had been, yet the sweeter for that. She’d been trying to seduce him for weeks, throwing herself at him as inexpertly as only a fourteen-year-old virgin could. She’d done everything possible to give the illusion of experience because she’d seen something in him that had spoken to her heart’s deepest longing.

  He’s good. Truly good, that tiny wisdom inside her had murmured.

  She’d overplayed her hand. At three years older, he’d been in some ways a typical sex-crazed boy, yet he’d possessed a wisdom beyond his age.

  She’d never met a boy like him, and somehow she’d understood that his goodness would fill some of the gaping holes inside her. Her mother was a lost cause, and her father was nonexistent. Callie had lived in too many places and belonged to none. In the only way a mixed-up teen could figure out, she’d used sex to get what she needed.

  David had been a gentleman, damn him.

  She’d put her crude power on full stun. The lowering fact was that the day he’d finally capitulated had been the day she’d cried. Rough, tough, leather-bedecked and fully pierced Callie had come undone at the sight of an abandoned kitten who’d borne more resemblance to Callie than she wanted to admit. She’d picked it up, and David had driven them to the vet, but the kitten was beyond saving, rail-thin and flea-bitten.

  That could have been her, abandoned by her own mother, who’d chosen the party life the second she thought Callie was old enough to stay alone. Callie’s final act of rebellion had come after her mother’s latest lousy boyfriend had followed her to her room and nearly shoved in the door before she could lock it.

  Callie understood now that an inner survival instinct had led her to become enough of a problem to merit drawing attention from those who would demand changes. When her mother was faced with a visit from the authorities to investigate, she’d shuffled Callie off to Miss Margaret’s.

  And Callie had, unlike the kitten, been saved.

  Or she’d thought she had been—until she’d fallen too hard and taken David down with her. The grown Callie grieved that David’s descent had begun with her and hadn’t yet ended.

  But the survivor in her didn’t give up easily. It was the one lesson she’d learned about herself—she was many things, but she was not weak.

  She looked off in the distance where David had disappeared, and made a vow.

  It stops here, David. Your future will be brighter than your past.

  She’d seen Carl’s Corner from the outside before, but Callie had never even attempted to go in it all those years ago. To the kids in Oak Hollow, the bar had seemed a forbidden fruit, enticing perhaps but also a little scary with its nose-wrinkling aroma of stale beer and cigarette smoke escaping every time the door opened.

  Now as she entered, Callie looked around with more than a little trepidation. She was no teetotaler or prude, but she preferred her bars to have lots of mahogany and brass, subdued music and sophisticated lighting. This place was the polar opposite—scarred knotty pine walls gone dark with age, neon beer signs on the wall, yellowed light fixtures turning complexions sallow. She was long past the age to be titillated by the rough and tumble; she saw plenty of that in her job.

  There was a hitch in the hum of conversation when she walked through the doorway. For nearly the space of a breath, she could hear an old Johnny Cash song as if she was standing right by the jukebox.

  Her heart slid up into her throat and started choking her.

  Or maybe that was the haze of cigarette smoke.

  The bartender was staring at her. So were many other sets of eyes.

  She knew, deep in her bones, that she’d made a mistake coming here. Why did she forget the way news traveled in a small town? There was no anonymity in Oak Hollow. People probably already knew, heaven help her, that she’d posted David’s bail.

  At least he wouldn’t be present tonight, not after losing his job.

  In or out? That was the simple choice.

  She decided on to stay and took the first step inside. Sometimes brazening out the situation was the only possible course. She kept her head high and strode straight to the bar. The bartender, a big man, likely an athlete run to fat, gave one curt nod as if admitting her to the kingdom.

  Though maybe only on a provisional basis.

  Still, she took it. Slid up on a lone cracked vinyl stool at one end of the bar when she would prefer to hide in a booth.

  The bartender took his time, sauntering over eventually. “What’ll you have?”

  Her favorite pinot grigio was probably out of the question. Likewise a mojito or anything of its ilk. “A beer,” she answered. “Whatever’s on tap.” The choice didn’t really matter; she was interested in keeping her head, not relaxing.

  She surveyed the room through its reflection over the bar. A sparse crowd, but two guys at the pool table in the corner had their heads together, and the glances cast her way weren’t reassuring. She wove her fingers together in her lap, clenching them tightly.

  The bartender returned with a mug and a coaster. “Three bucks,” he said. Then his eyes flicked to the space over her left shoulder.

  Callie followed the movement, swiveling on her stool.

  A rawboned blond man, younger than herself, touched the brim of his gimme cap. “Evenin’, miss. Name’s Rudy Ballard. Could I interest you in a dance?”

  A bug on a pin could have felt no more trapped as curious glances came her way. “Uh, I don’t…” His manner seemed mild, but all her nerve endings were on edge. She grasped at a compromise, pointing to the empty stool next to her. “I just got my beer. Would you care to join me?”

  His eyes darted around at the change of plans. Behind him, she could see his two pool buddies leering.

  The faint blush on his cheeks decided her. “Please.” She gestured again. “I’m Callie Hunter.”

  “I know.” Uneasily he took a seat.

  Her eyebrows rose at that. “Is that right?”

  An awkward shrug made her wonder if he was even out of his teens. “Well, I mean, that is, word travels. Not much going on in Oak Hollow.” A toothy smile revealed a dimple in one cheek. “Plus you were at my daddy’s house today.”

  Oh, dear. More and more tangles. “Ballard.” She thought for a minute, then recalled the frame house with the half-finished garage under construction. “Oh, yes. I think he said his son was helping him with the new addition. Is that you?”

  “Sure is. My daddy has a way with cars, and folks are always asking him to take a look at theirs. He used to work on Miss Margaret’s vehicle, and she encouraged him to set up a real garage there at the house. Went in with him on it.” A quick grin. “Said she’d be angling for a better deal on repairs when it was done. Shoot, Miss Margaret knew like ever’body else that there’s no better deal to be had, but she liked to tease my daddy ’cause he’s so serious.”

  Callie recalled the man now, tall and sober and silent. His wife, a sweet little bird of a woman, had fluttered about and kept the conversation going while her husband loomed in the background.

  “Closest garage after Daddy’s is way up to Blue Ridge. Folks need him here, and winter’s hard, working outside, lying on the cold ground under a vehicle.” Rudy perused her features as others had. She should be used to it by now. “You gonna let me and Daddy finish building? He can’t make payments until we get done and he can take more business, but he’s good for it, I swear to yo
u.”

  The responsibility was breathtaking. Miss Margaret’s tendrils were wound more deeply into this community than Callie would have ever imagined. “I told your folks I wasn’t out to change anything. Did they not believe me?”

  Another stain of color. “I don’t know. I guess so, I mean—they didn’t ask me to talk to you or nothin’, but I just, well…” His eyes shifted back toward the pool table. “Folks are worried, seeing you with David Langley and knowing you’re from the city and all…nobody is sure what you might do.”

  He had what trial lawyers called a glass face, his emotions clear as day. Callie was sure she could get some information from him, but she wouldn’t try now, not when the bartender kept wiping the same yard of counter and the fellow two stools down was leaning enough that he could fall with one little push.

  “I think I’m ready to dance, Rudy.” She stood.

  Surprise skipped over his features. “Well, ah…sure thing, Miss Hunter.”

  “Callie.” She smiled up at him and was rewarded by another blush. She walked to the open floor space and turned, waiting for him to follow. “You can call me Callie.”

  He sped up and gripped her waist with one hand, holding out the other to clasp her palm. They shuffled in a slow box step while she waited for him to relax.

  Then Callie the interrogator went to work.

  “So what is it that worries people about David Langley?” she asked with just the right touch of wide-eyed innocence. This boy, after all, would have been only a child back then.

  His brows flew upward. “Well, um, I mean—” He shook his head, then plunged ahead. “Do you not know he’s a murderer? I mean, you come from the city and all, but has no one told you that?”

  Her gamble was rewarded. Apparently he was unaware of David and Callie’s earlier connection—at least, for now. Plus he was too fixated on her cleavage.

  “Well, yes, of course I do, but hasn’t he served his time and been released?”

  “Yeah.” A quick frown as he finally looked at her face instead of her bosom. “But you’ve got to be aware that he beat the hell out of Mickey Carson, I mean, I hear tell that you put up his bail.”

  “I only loaned his mother the money,” she lied blithely. “Miss Margaret was apparently fond of him, and I think she would have wanted me to do that. After all, isn’t everyone innocent until proven guilty?”

  “But he—”

  She let her eyes go wide. “Were you here that night, is that it? Did you see the fight?”

  “No one did—I mean—” His gaze cut to his buddies.

  The sheriff’s report said that seven witnesses had sworn David attacked Mickey Carson. There was no way; anyone who’d tried a case knew that seven people would have seven different stories. Witnesses all in sync were always a suspicious sign, plus this had happened in a bar and almost certainly at least some of them had been drinking that night. “It’s okay. I’m on vacation here, and I’ve got too much else to worry over.” Sometimes the less you pressed, the more you found out.

  “We all saw it, just not—” A lift of one shoulder. “Not the very beginning.”

  She surveyed the room. “There’s not much place to hide in here. How come you couldn’t see?”

  “They were in the alley out back.”

  “Oh, really.” She smiled at him and touched the hair at his nape.

  His eyes went a little unfocused. “Um, yeah. I mean, Mickey had had some words with him earlier, but nobody threw a punch in here.”

  “What kind of words?” Shamelessly she took a deep breath and watched his gaze drop again.

  “Mickey, well, he, uh, he’s not real easy to get along with. Most folks give him a pass, they don’t—”

  Hmm. “So Mr. Langley doesn’t give him a pass?”

  Rudy cleared his throat. “It’s not—he doesn’t say much. He mostly doesn’t come in until near closing, but sometimes when Carl needs extra help, he’s here earlier and then he has to be out front. That’s when stuff happens sometimes.”

  “Like fights, you mean?”

  “No. Matter of fact, I’m surprised nothing boiled over before. Mickey, he can be downright mean. He’s said some things no man would stand for, and me and the boys have wondered how Langley didn’t just haul off and pop him.”

  “Why don’t they like each other?”

  “Well, see, Mickey, he admired Ned Compton something fierce. My daddy says he always wanted to be a big shot, Mickey did, but in high school, there was David, and nobody could hold a match to him. The whole town was plumb goofy over him like he was the Second Coming or something. But Mr. Compton, when he came to town with his plans to build a resort and provide a lot of jobs, he was the real deal, Mickey told me. Folks felt like he could make Oak Hollow someplace special. David didn’t like him, though—probably just jealous of Mr. Compton stealing his thunder, least that’s what Mickey says. And when Mr. Compton took to courting David’s mama, well, David couldn’t stand it.”

  “What does that have to do with Mickey Carson?”

  “Mickey took to doing things for Mr. Compton, errands and stuff. Just to rile David at first, I suspect, but he got the notion that Mr. Compton was gonna help him move up in the world, and he wanted that real bad. He said he was gonna be a big man like Mr. Compton and show everybody. So when David killed Mr. Compton, well, Mickey would have led the lynch mob if David hadn’t confessed to the crime and gone off to jail right quick.”

  “So now that David’s back, Mickey’s still holding a grudge? Has David ever made a move toward him?”

  “Not that I saw—” Rudy’s eyes shifted to the door, and he stiffened.

  Callie glanced over to see a beer-bellied, thick-necked man, his posture screaming aggression.

  “That’s him, that’s Mickey,” Rudy said and paled a little.

  “I heard he was in the hospital, half-dead. The stories seem to be a little exaggerated.”

  “I, uh…”

  Just then Carson’s gaze landed on her, she resisted the urge to shiver. Pig-mean, those eyes, as he approached, limping but still menacing.

  Rudy skirted away a couple of steps but drew her with him, seeming torn between protecting and abandoning her.

  “Evenin’, Rudy. Who we got here?”

  Callie’s spine tingled with the impulse to back away, but she’d learned not to be intimidated, either by her colleagues or the criminals she faced on a daily basis, so she met his gaze squarely. “My name is Callie Hunter.” She offered a handshake as if the prospect of his skin against hers didn’t make her stomach pitch.

  He ignored it as his eyes bored into hers. “I hear you’re siding with that sonofabitch who tried to kill me. You got any idea, girl, the filth you’re climbing into bed with?” Then his lips curved in a nasty smile. “Is that it? The boy got you back in his bed already? I remember you, see, from back then, sugar.”

  Never let them see you sweat. She knew that lesson cold; she’d been the target of many crude threats, even some death threats, but never had her skin crawled quite this way. She wanted away from him, wanted a very long shower to wash off any trace of him.

  Silence was its own weapon, though never had it been more difficult to wield. She waited several beats, until both Carson and his audience had become restless, and Carson’s neck had mottled with red.

  Then, in a tone that was pure contempt, she spoke at last. “It’s long been my observation that those most interested in the sex lives of others seldom have one of their own.” She kept her eyes on him as one would an adder within striking distance. “Rudy, thank you for the dance. It’s been lovely,” she said in her snottiest imitation of Main Line superiority.

  She could hear the mutters as she grabbed her purse and walked out. She was exceedingly grateful that she was parked near the door.

  As she slipped into her car and locked all the doors, Mickey Carson loomed in the doorway.

  Shivering, Callie drove back to Miss Margaret’s and locked every door and window onc
e inside.

  Chapter Eleven

  When morning arrived after a too-short night’s sleep, she wondered if David would show. Wondered if she dared broach any of what she’d learned last night.

  They’d planned another day of inspecting properties, but as she watched the sun rise over the garden, she realized that she craved a day off. Time just to hang around here and…breathe. She was exhausted. It occurred to her that since the moment the ill-fated trial had ended, she’d been on edge, caught in a simmering pot of anxiety—for months before really, ever since the case had come her way.

  Callie sank into the old wicker love seat on the back porch, set her coffee cup at her feet and drifted down to rest on her side. Her eyelids descended as she listened to birdsong, felt the brush of morning’s still-cool breeze wafting off the hillside. She didn’t have the strength to get up and return to bed, and on this shady porch, she didn’t really need to move. Each breath came more slowly and deeply than the last, until the world around her faded into an asylum of peace.

  David found her asleep when at last he arrived twenty minutes late. He hadn’t intended to come at all, but conscience had warred with instinct, and conscience had won.

  He’d knocked on the front door with no resulting answer, so he’d walked around back, expecting to find her, as before, somewhere near the garden. Not that she had the first idea what to do with it.

  He’d almost called out to her, but he was glad now that he hadn’t.

  He stopped and considered leaving, but he didn’t do that, either. He owed her for his bail, and whatever sins could be posted to his account, reneging on his debts would not be one of them. That was only part of the reason he was here.

  This was the first time he’d had a chance to take a good look at her without her knowing, and though it could be considered an invasion of her privacy, he was going to do it anyway.

  He needed to understand her. He was driven to figure out how the connection between them—goodness knows he’d felt the punch of it last night—had survived when nearly everything about them was different.