Slow Burn (Rabun County Book 1)

by Lisa Clark O'Neill

  She glanced up to find him watching her again, but not in a way that suggested he thought she was crazy.

  “I think I need to brush up on my physics.”

  She smiled, the tension easing from her muscles. “If you figure anything out, let me know.”

  “I honestly hate to cut our conversation short, because it’s damn interesting, but I have to get going. My sister is temporarily in charge of my mom’s cat, and leaving the two of them together for an extended period of time never ends well.”

  “Sure,” Adeline said. “I understand. Um, thank you. For chopping the kindling and bringing the pizza. And… for listening.”

  “You’re welcome. On all counts.”

  She walked him to the door.

  “I have to ask,” he said, hesitating with his hand on the knob. “You indicated earlier that you had… a reaction. To me. You don’t think I’m…”

  “A serial killer?”

  One side of his mouth slid up. “I was going to say dangerous. But sure.”

  “No. Of course not. At least, not in the traditional sense of danger, anyway.”

  “But in a nontraditional sense?”

  She nodded.

  “You might have to explain that one to me.”

  “You know how I said that most people are background noise. Easy to ignore?” Adeline bit her lip, meeting that clear grey gaze. “You’re definitely not elevator music.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  IT wasn’t the most flattering compliment he’d ever received, Sutton considered as he scooped up a bite of oatmeal. But at least he was pretty sure it was a compliment.

  Reflecting on his conversation with Adeline from the night before, he decided that was one of the only things he was sure of. Other than his growing attraction. The woman fascinated him, and not just because she had a really damn intriguing back story – and current story, for that matter. She was a tangled knot of hidden strength and visible vulnerability, wrapped in a curvy, sexy, if slightly off-beat package.

  But he didn’t mind the off-beat. In fact, it further intrigued him.

  He wasn’t sure how much credence to give her supposed paranormal ability, but the Lichtenberg scar didn’t lie. And the internet searches he’d run last night suggested that changes to brain function were not only possible, but statistically likely following a lightning strike. The nature of the changes varied, and while most of the data involved the more typical side-effects she’d mentioned, there were some anecdotal examples of people experiencing alterations less easily explained – such as an orthopedic surgeon who’d never been musically inclined becoming a classical pianist and composer.

  He’d also – because he was a trained researcher, after all – looked up old news reports on both the tragedy which took the lives of her mom and sister, and the child predator to whom she’d referred. He hadn’t needed the man’s name, only a few key words, and the story as she’d told it was all right there. Minus her name, as she was a minor at the time, and the mention of anything extrasensory.

  He didn’t feel guilty for checking. He hadn’t been lying when he said that his first instinct was empathy. Unlike her, he might not be super attuned to emotional vibes, but he would have had to be a Vulcan not to recognize that Adeline was hurting.

  And he hadn’t liked it a bit.

  However, while curiosity might kill the cat, it was and always had been his primary motivation. He’d driven his parents half-crazy with endless sentences beginning with why or how, but they’d had the patience not to discourage him, and the sense later on to park his butt at the library and eventually the school science lab. Then when he wondered why or how, he’d researched or experimented until he had a satisfactory answer.

  He didn’t want to think anything bad about Adeline’s dad, but found it curious that someone who’d spent their life in the sciences seemed to lack curiosity about something which so profoundly affected his daughter. But maybe it was because it affected his daughter that he resisted delving deeper. Fear mixed with love could make people do strange things.

  As if sensing the train of his thoughts, Colonel Mustard jumped onto the counter and proceeded to stick his face into Sutton’s mostly empty bowl.

  “It’s oatmeal, you dumbass. You think I’m going to sit here with milk after what you did last time?”

  The cat, perpetually judging him according to standards he could never meet, looked at him with disdain – and with oatmeal clinging to his whiskers.

  “Maybe, if you hadn’t stepped on the edge of the bowl and flipped it over the other day, I would have eaten cereal and offered you the leftovers.”

  That earned him a tail flick.

  His phone began to vibrate on the counter, and Sutton pressed the button to put it on speaker when he recognized his brother’s number.

  “Top o’ the morning, E.”

  “Sutton,” Ethan said, and by the tone of his voice, Sutton knew he hadn’t called for a casual morning chat. “I need to talk to you about last night.”

  The only thing Sutton had done last night was to head over to Adeline’s before picking up Colonel Mustard from Willow’s. A vague sense of unease for both women made him sit straighter on the counter stool. “What about last night?”

  “You were at the Black Walnut Inn for happy hour.”

  Unease turned to confusion, and even though Ethan hadn’t phrased it as a question, he answered all the same. “Yeah. Willow asked me to stop by and meet the group of women I’m taking on the hike tomorrow.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “Ah, maybe thirty minutes. Forty at most. Why?”

  “Where did you go after that?”

  Sutton hesitated, unease rearing its head again, He didn’t like answering another question when his own had been ignored, but this was his brother. He assumed Ethan had his reasons. “I picked up a pizza in Lakemont and took it to a friend’s cabin.”

  “Did you spend the night?”

  “Are you asking as my brother or as the sheriff?”

  “Can you just answer the question?”

  So, it was the sheriff he was speaking to, then, “No, I did not spend the night. I was there until around eight-thirty, maybe nine at the latest. Upon taking my leave, I went back into Clayton and picked up the cat from Willow’s place, where I failed to linger because both she and the Colonel were exhibiting cranky behavior due to forced, prolonged proximity to each other. I was back at Mom and Dad’s, safe and sound, by ten.” He paused. “Is that enough information, or would you like me to draw you a timeline?”

  “You didn’t stop anywhere else while you were in town?”

  “I just told you that I didn’t.”

  “And once you were home, you didn’t head back out?”

  While part of Sutton wanted to refuse to answer any more questions until Ethan told him what the hell this was about, he reined in his irritation. Beneath the carefully even tone, he heard the note of strain in Ethan’s voice, a note that probably only someone who knew him well would be able to pick up on. Whatever his reason for holding back, Sutton gathered it was serious.

  “No. I didn’t. And the security camera is functioning, so you can check Dad’s equipment if you need to see that my truck didn’t move.” Because the Wi-Fi was so spotty in the mountains, his parents had stuck with the old school, hardwired security system they’d installed when they moved in. Motion activated, the camera, like the answering machine, still relied on tapes. It was antiquated as hell, but effective.

  The sound was barely audible, but Sutton detected his brother’s sigh of relief. “Okay.”

  “Now,” Sutton said. “You want to tell me what this is about?”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and Sutton thought his brother might not answer.

  “One of the women from your hiking party is dead.”

  “What?” Shocked, Sutton stared at the phone. “How?”

  “We’re still investigating. But she appears to have fallen over a
balcony railing and hit her head.”

  “Jesus.” Out of habit, Sutton pushed his hair away from his face. He pictured the women around the table last night, warm and laughing and happy. Several of them had young kids. “Which one was it?”

  “Julie Harlowe.”

  Hand freezing midair, Sutton slowly lowered it as the nature of Ethan’s questions clicked. Muting the speaker function, he picked up the phone and brought it to his ear. “Someone told you that she hit on me last night.”

  Ethan’s hesitation was pronounced. “It was mentioned that the two of you had a private conversation.”

  Private conversation. The oatmeal wanted to surge back up his throat. “And you wanted to make sure that I hadn’t… what? Returned to the inn after hours? Helped her over the balcony? Jesus, Ethan. Are you serious with this?”

  “I told you, we’re investigating –”

  “A suspicious death. I’m not stupid.”

  “Believe me, Doctor McCloud, I didn’t think that you were.”

  Sutton didn’t have to see his brother to know that he was dialing back his temper. While they’d always gotten along fairly well, no sibling relationship was immune to some form of rivalry. In their case, Ethan had been the star athlete and ladies’ man, while Sutton had been the straight A student. And while both were essentially comfortable in those roles, there were certainly times when the grass was greener. At times of high stress, it was easy enough to stand on opposite sides of the fence with a color meter.

  Sutton rose from the stool. “She – Julie – followed after me on my way out. We had a brief conversation, maybe two minutes, if that, and she handed me a cocktail napkin on which she’d written her number. I took it to be polite, but I had no intention of calling because one, it seemed unprofessional since I was representing Willow’s business at the time. And two… I didn’t bring a pizza out to the lake for my health.”

  “Understood. But you have to realize that you might be required to elaborate on that at some point. Along with a name for verification.”

  Sutton stifled the desire to curse. The last thing he wanted was to drag Adeline into… whatever the hell this was. But he’d grown up the son of a lawman, so he knew how this stuff went.

  “Fine.” Restless, he walked toward the window. As ridiculous as the impulse might be, he wanted to reassure himself that his truck was indeed still parked in the driveway, right where he’d left it. He knew he hadn’t sleep-driven back into town for some sort of late-night assignation, but being interrogated about a woman’s death tended to make one a bit paranoid. Even when the interrogator was your brother.

  “Do you remember anything else that seems relevant?”

  “You mean other than the fact that, to a person, they were drunk off their asses? I’d think that might play a role in how one of them might have fallen over the balcony.” Leaning his forehead on the glass, Sutton closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. That was a shitty thing to say. I enjoyed meeting them, and I’m sorry as hell about what happened to Julie. Jesus.” He banged his head once. “What an awful birthday for her friend.”

  “We’re still working our way through the interviews, but I might need you to stop by the station later this morning, give a more official statement. Just so we can cross and dot all the things that need to be crossed and dotted. And Sutton? The station. Not the inn.”

  Sutton’s brows drew together. Did his brother think he was going to come attempt to rubberneck or something? “I know how accident scenes work, Ethan. I’ve responded to more than a few of them myself.”

  “Just… steer clear of here today, okay? Don’t try to be a damn hero.”

  What the hell was that supposed to mean? “A hero? Kind of after the fact, don’t you think? Considering Julie is already dead.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I really don’t.”

  “Stay away from the inn, and from these women. Don’t drop by, don’t call, don’t send freaking smoke signals offering your condolences. Is that clear enough?”

  A chill danced along Sutton’s spine. He wanted to be angry at Ethan’s tone, the insinuation, but he’d unfortunately been around an all-too similar block once before.

  Don’t say anything else until I get you a lawyer.

  Sutton could still hear his dad’s broken-up words as they came through the crappy connection on his phone, feel the fear they’d inspired. And an echo of that same fear, however misplaced, as he spoke with his brother.

  “Do you really think there’s a chance this wasn’t an accident?”

  Ethan waited a beat too long to respond. “There’s no reason, at this point, to suspect it was anything else.”

  Which was pure equivocation. But Sutton recognized a brick wall when he hit one.

  He considered that there was no good answer for the question rolling around in his head, but he asked it anyway. “What would you have done if I said I’d gone back to the inn last night?”

  “You didn’t,” Ethan said, his tone flat. “So, there’s no point in speculating what if.”

  ETHAN McCloud ended the call, rolling his shoulders to ease some of the tension he carried there. Getting called out first thing in the morning to come to the scene of a fatality was never fun, but when you were called by your lead investigator because your brother’s name had been bandied around as a person of interest, it added an extra scoop of crap to the shit sundae.

  He’d broken protocol further by calling Sutton himself, but it wasn’t like this was a homicide investigation. Based on the evidence and witness statements they’d taken so far, Julie Harlowe – as Sutton pointed out – had been drunk off her ass last night. According to her roommate, she’d left the room sometime after midnight, claiming she needed air. The roommate fell back to sleep, and hadn’t realized that Julie was missing until she heard the sirens of the emergency vehicles responding to the scene. One of the cooks reporting for breakfast duty had found her.

  But accident or no, he didn’t want Sutton here poking around, causing Julie Harlowe’s friends to make more associations than they’d already made. Grief-stricken people more often than not started looking for someone to blame, and in this case he’d rather the hotel itself be the target of any possible fault-finding.

  Not that he thought Sutton had committed any fault to find. The man truly was a damn boy scout. But he’d drive out to their parents’ place later, have a look at the security tape, just to reassure himself.

  Since rolling his shoulders hadn’t done the trick, Ethan reached back to rub his neck. He’d slept on the sofa – again – last night, and was feeling it this morning.

  “Sheriff?”

  He turned to find the inn’s manager hovering in the doorway. He’d stepped outside in order to call Sutton, and to take a moment to breathe. The grief of the other women, Julie Harlowe’s friends, was like a black hole sucking the oxygen from the room. No matter how long he’d been doing this job, he could never quite harden himself to it.

  “Yes, Michelle? It is Michelle, right?”

  She nodded, and offered a small, if fleeting, smile. Despite freshened makeup, her face bore signs of the tears she’d been trying to hide.

  “I have the footage that you asked for pulled up.”

  The only security camera inside the hotel was positioned in the lobby, covering both the lounge area and the bar. Given that the inn operated much like a bed and breakfast, there were no employees in place overnight. Guests used their room keys to go in and out the front door, which was locked after midnight, until the kitchen staff returned at six a.m. They knew that Julie had left her room at some point, purportedly to get some air. While logic dictated the source of that air involved the balcony from which she’d fallen, Ethan knew that people – especially intoxicated people – weren’t always ruled by logic. Ethan wanted to see if she’d passed through the lobby at some point, before she fell to her death.

  He followed Michelle into the office, noting the murmur of voices in the dining area. Th
e inn boasted just six rooms, with three of them occupied by the women from Julie’s party, and Ethan thought it would have been understandable if they’d called off breakfast. However, Michelle made sure that all of the guests, as well as the first responders, were offered both food and beverages. Since the cook had been too upset by finding Julie’s body to do her job, Michelle ordered in food from Clancy’s. While subdued, the inn’s other guests were nevertheless taking advantage of her diligence to her duties.

  Ethan glanced at her pale face. “How are you holding up?”

  “Well enough, under the circumstances.” That weak smile fluttered again. “Thank you for asking. Um, the camera is motion-activated and uses facial recognition to distinguish people from, say, falling objects, so you don’t have to sit through hours of footage or anything. I haven’t watched it, but it looks like it only recorded eighteen minutes of activity last night. You’re welcome to sit here at my desk.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “I’m just going to…” she gestured vaguely toward the door.

  “You’re doing a great job,” he told her.

  More tears filled her dark eyes, but she blinked hard to clear them. “Thank you. Um, just yell if you need anything.”

  Her boot heels tapped out a rapid staccato as she hurried away, and Ethan imagined that she was headed for some quiet corner to pull herself together. She’d been both efficient and sympathetic to the needs of hotel guests and emergency personnel alike, but the effort was clearly wearing on her. Ethan couldn’t blame her. Even as a law enforcement officer, dealing with the unexpected death of an otherwise young and vibrant person was a challenging way to start the day.

  He glanced around, studying the L-shaped desk that was big enough to accommodate a second computer setup. He hadn’t heard anything about Michelle having an assistant, but he guessed one person couldn’t be on the job every day of the week, even if they were an innkeeper. Curious, he moved that direction, leaning over to look at the photographs and whatnot on that side of the desk. A pretty redhead smiled out from several of them, accompanied by various other people, so he assumed this was her space. The wall behind the desk held a framed write-up about the Black Walnut by some Atlanta-based travel magazine, as well as a diploma from Emerson University. Seeing that it had been awarded to one Charlotte Parks, he realized this must be the desk used by the half-owner whenever she happened to be in town. He’d never had occasion to meet Ms. Parks, but he knew she and her brother owned the place, even if they didn’t take the most active role in its operation. Trust fund babies, their family had owned a house on the lake for decades, and they’d renovated this place a little over two years ago, presumably as an investment.