The Rebel's Return

by Gina Wilkins

  “Can you meet me?”

  “Yes,” he said without hesitation. “When?”

  “Give me half an hour.”

  He didn’t have to ask where she wanted to meet. “I’ll be there.”

  LUCAS WAS WAITING inside the rock house when Rachel walked in. He’d spread a thick cotton quilt over the dirty floor, so they could sit comfortably on the cold stone. He was pouring steaming coffee from an insulated container into a mug as she walked in.

  He placed the mug into her hands and pressed her downward, urging her to sit cross-legged on the quilt. “Sit down and drink this. Take your time.”

  He was watching her as if he was afraid she would collapse at any moment. Either he’d heard something in her voice when she’d called, or she looked even worse than she’d thought after her nearly sleepless night.

  Rachel took the coffee and sank to the quilt, feeling her knees weaken now that she was actually here with Lucas. The brew was hot and strong, and she sipped it slowly, letting the warmth spread through her.

  Lucas sat in front of her, without looking away from her face. “Take all the time you need. There’s no other place I have to be.”

  She tried to smile. “I’m really not going to collapse, Lucas.”

  “Something has upset you.”

  “Yes. But I’m fine. I just want to talk to you about it.”

  “What is it? Did someone say something to disturb you?”

  For just a moment, he was the young Lucas she remembered, fire in his eyes, willing to fight to defend her.

  She laid a hand on his knee and shook her head. “No one said anything. It’s something I found last night in a box of my brother’s belongings.”

  Lucas went still. “What did you find?”

  She’d brought a macramé shoulder bag to free her hands so she could climb the gate. She opened it and pulled out the crumpled manila envelope. “This.”

  Lucas accepted the envelope from her. “What is it?”

  “Open it.”

  She kept her gaze on his face as he tilted the envelope to retrieve the contents. His eyes narrowed when the filthy wallet fell into his hand. He opened it slowly.

  “Where did you say you found this?” His voice was strained as he stared at Al Jennings’s driver’s license.

  “It was with Roger’s things—in a box with the stuff from his desk. Mother packed everything without looking through it, so I doubt that she saw this.”

  Lucas flipped carefully through the contents of the wallet—the license, credit cards, insurance cards, faded photographs of Roger and Rachel. There were several bills stuffed into the money pocket—two hundreds, a twenty and a ten.

  “It’s covered in dirt,” Rachel commented, though she knew Lucas had noticed that for himself.

  “Yes.”

  “It looks as though it was...buried.”

  “Like Nadine’s bracelet,” Lucas agreed.

  Rachel swallowed. “Do you suppose Roger found it in the same place as the bracelet?”

  Lucas closed the wallet and slipped it back into the envelope. “I think that’s a good guess.”

  “Lucas...”

  “Don’t let your imagination run away with you, Rachel.”

  “But why would my father have left town without his wallet? Without any money? Without his driver’s license?”

  “Did your father have a car?”

  She nodded. “A little two-seater sports car. My grandmother said he was going through a midlife crisis—he colored the gray in his hair, bought a sports car and started running around with Nadine.”

  “The car disappeared when they did?”

  “Yes. Everyone assumed they left in it.”

  “They probably did.”

  “But why would my father’s wallet have been buried with your stepmother’s bracelet? Why...?”

  Lucas covered her hand with his. “Maybe he decided to change his name.”

  “Then why leave the money?”

  “I don’t know,” he said with a sigh.

  “You think something is strange about this, too, don’t you?”

  He didn’t answer for a while, but sat holding her hand in his, the envelope on the quilt beside him. “There are some things that don’t add up,” he admitted finally.

  “Roger told you he didn’t believe our father and Nadine left town. He thought they were murdered and buried on your property.”

  “That was his theory.”

  “Did you...ever look? For possible grave sites, I mean.”

  “No. I told you, I thought Roger was crazy. And then he died, and I was suddenly defending myself against a possible murder charge, thanks to a bunch of meddlers who swore they’d heard me threaten to kill Roger.”

  “Did you ever threaten to kill him?” Rachel asked softly.

  Lucas’s mouth twisted. “Probably. Roger and I were always mouthing off at each other, saying stupid things. But, Rachel, if I said it, I never meant it.”

  “I know you didn’t kill him. You had an alibi.”

  “Actually...I didn’t.”

  Her hand jerked in his. Lucas tightened his fingers to hold her.

  She stared at him. “What are you talking about? Of course you had an alibi.”

  “You mean Lizzie Carpenter.”

  She nodded grimly. “Yes.”

  “I didn’t sleep with her.”

  Rachel scowled. “Lucas, you spent the entire night with her. She told everyone so.”

  “She lied.”

  Rachel tugged at her hand. “Let go of me.”

  “No. Sit still.”

  “Lizzie told everyone you and she spent the night together. She showed me the charm you gave her.”

  Now it was Lucas’s turn to scowl in confusion.

  “What charm?”

  “A gold heart—exactly like the one you gave me,” Rachel whispered, looking away.

  After a moment of silence, Lucas cleared his throat. “Okay, let’s start over. What the hell are you talking about?”

  Still avoiding looking at him, her hand lying limply in his, Rachel answered. “As you know, Roger’s body was held by the coroner for almost a week after he was found dead, while they investigated whether he’d died of accidental causes or...or something else. It wasn’t until two days afterward that we could hold the funeral. My mother was in terrible shape. The rumors were already starting to fly that you’d had something to do with my brother’s death. Sam was loudly demanding an investigation, and my mother said she’d always known the McBrides would destroy what was left of our family. I couldn’t tell anyone I’d been seeing you, because I knew they would get hysterical and forbid me to ever have anything to do with you again.”

  “That was why I didn’t call you during those early days. I knew your family needed you and that you couldn’t be with me.”

  She stared at her hand in his. “Did you leave a bouquet of red roses at our door on the day of Roger’s funeral? They were addressed to me and they had no signature. My family assumed they were from my classmates. I thought maybe they were from you.”

  “They were.”

  She nodded as he confirmed her suspicions. “They were beautiful. They helped me get through that day, because I knew you were thinking of me, even though we couldn’t be together. I thought that once everything had settled down, after Chief Packer had proven to everyone’s satisfaction that you’d had nothing to do with Roger’s death, you and I could start seeing each other openly at last. I knew Mother wouldn’t like it...and I knew Sam would hate it, but I didn’t care about him. I just wanted to be with you.”

  “But things didn’t settle down,” Lucas said grimly. “Packer was convinced I’d pushed Roger off that bluff. He was trying everything he could to prove it, even though he had no evidence. Sam was running around calling me a murderer, and most of the townspeople believed him, since they’d always suspected I’d come to no good, anyway. Packer hauled me in several times to question me. And every time, I told him I had
no alibi for the night Roger died.”

  “Every time you said that, you only increased his suspicions about you. And then Lizzie Carpenter told everyone where you really were that night.”

  Rachel had to force her voice through her tight throat as she remembered the devastation she’d felt over Lizzie’s revelation.

  “Rachel...”

  She swallowed and pressed on. “Lizzie and her mother came to our house the week after the funeral—almost two weeks after Roger died. While my mother cried all over hers, Lizzie and I went into the kitchen to make coffee. Lizzie told me what everyone was saying about you, and then she assured me that she knew you hadn’t had anything to do with Roger’s death. She knew, she said, because you had spent that entire night with her. That was the first time I had heard about it, though she’d already told Chief Packer and several others.”

  Rachel had had to listen to Lizzie rave about her “night of passion” with Lucas for nearly half an hour, she’d had to pretend that Lucas meant nothing to her, and that she didn’t care who he’d slept with. It had been the most difficult half hour of her young life.

  “And then she showed me the charm,” she whispered, closing her eyes against the painful memories. “Like the one you’d given me. She said you’d given it to her that night—the night you spent with her.”

  Lucas’s hand tightened around hers. His voice was low, urgent. “Rachel, she lied. I didn’t give her a charm. And I didn’t spend the night with her. I didn’t even see Lizzie the night Roger died.”

  Frowning deeply, Rachel turned her head to look at him, studying his face intently. “You’re saying you really had no alibi that night?”

  “No. I drove to Atlanta—alone—and I spent the evening in a bar, drinking with a fake ID. I didn’t get home until well after midnight. I wanted to think about the stuff Roger had told me, and to decide how much of it I should tell you. And I kept wondering whether he really would be able to break us up.”

  Rachel’s mind was spinning. “But why did Lizzie say what she did? Did you ask her to lie for you, so you would have an alibi?”

  “Of course not. That was all her idea.” He drew a quick, sharp breath, then let it out in a sound of disgust. “Lizzie and I dated for a while in high school. But I never went out with her after I started seeing you. She kept trying to get me back—I don’t know why. Called me all the time, followed me around. She annoyed the hell out of me, to be honest.”

  “Did you give her the charm while you were dating?”

  “I never gave her a charm. You were the only one...” He stopped abruptly. “Hell.”

  “What?”

  “Lizzie came into the jewelry store when I was buying that charm for you. She asked if I was buying it for Emily. I said no, but I wouldn’t tell her who it was for. She was still in the store when I left.”

  “You think she bought the same charm for herself?” Rachel wasn’t sure she believed all this, but she had never known Lucas to make up elaborate stories.

  “Hell, I don’t know. But it sounds like something she’d do.”

  “I still don’t understand why she told everyone you’d spent the night with her. What did she hope to gain, if it wasn’t true?”

  “She thought she was doing me a favor. She came to me one afternoon and she said she’d already been to Packer. She’d heard that I told Packer I didn’t have an alibi, and so she’d provided me with one. She told him I’d lied to him to protect her reputation.”

  “She thought you’d be so grateful to her that you’d date her again?”

  “That’s exactly what she thought. I told her it wasn’t going to happen. I said I didn’t need her alibi, because I didn’t kill Roger. She refused to change her story. She said she would look like a fool if she did, and she begged me not to dispute it.”

  “So you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t know what to do,” he admitted. “I didn’t want Lizzie lying for me, but I couldn’t make her stop. When I tried to explain where I really was, no one believed me. Some people thought I’d spent the night with Lizzie. The others maintained I’d killed your brother. I knew if anyone found out you and I had been seeing each other, there would be even more speculation that Roger and I had gotten into a fight, and that I’d pushed him off the bluff.”

  “So you kept quiet.”

  “I kept quiet,” he agreed flatly. “I neither confirmed nor denied Lizzie’s story. And I watched the townspeople pull even further away from my family, some of them even refusing to let their kids play with my little sister because they didn’t want any association with me. I hung around your house, trying to catch you alone for a minute, but someone was always there. And you didn’t come out of your house for weeks.”

  “I was taking care of my mother. She had a breakdown of some sort and she wouldn’t let me or my grandmother out of her sight. People came to the house to bring us food and try to talk to us about the scandal—they kept speculating about you and Lizzie, wondering if she was telling the truth, or if you’d killed Roger and were using her to cover for you. I didn’t want to believe either possibility, but I was so confused. So overwhelmed by everything that had happened...”

  “You were deliberately avoiding me, weren’t you?”

  “I suppose I was,” she whispered. “The things Lizzie said... she made it sound so real. And it hurt me so badly to think that you and she...”

  She swallowed. “You must have felt so alone during those weeks,” she mused, thinking for the first time how it must have been for Lucas. “Did you try to talk to your father? Tell him what had happened? Ask for his advice?”

  “I tried. I told him what Roger had said to me before he died.”

  Rachel swallowed. “You told your father Roger thought he was a murderer?”

  “Yes. I asked if he’d had any knowledge that Roger had been hanging around our land, looking for evidence. If he had seen Roger the night he died.”

  “What did he say?”

  Lucas’s expression hardened. “He told me to get out of his house.”

  “He threw you out? Just for asking questions?”

  Lucas nodded. “He told me he didn’t like my implications and that he wasn’t answering any questions raised by a Jennings. When I tried to push for answers, he told me to leave.”

  “That was the night you left town?”

  He nodded again. “I tried to call you first. I thought you, if no one else, would believe me. I thought you could meet me, help me decide what to do next. You hung up on me.”

  She remembered the call. She’d heard Lucas’s voice, and she had panicked, terrified that she would burst into tears and reveal everything. “My mother was in the room. I didn’t know what to say to you. She and my grandmother were still distraught with grief over Roger. I was upset about losing the brother I had never known well enough, and I was still reeling from what Lizzie had told me. I felt so betrayed.”

  “You really thought I’d slept with her? After all the things I’d said to you that Saturday afternoon? All the promises I’d made to you?”

  The hint of hurt in Lucas’s voice put Rachel on the defensive. “I didn’t know what else to think. Lizzie was so adamant about what had happened, and everyone told me you weren’t denying it. And, Lucas, she had shown me the charm.”

  “She must have somehow found out you were the girl I’d been seeing. She must have wanted to come between us. I just can’t understand why you believed her.”

  Rachel was finally able to jerk her hand from Lucas’s grasp. She jumped to her feet, staring down at him. “I was eighteen years old. I had lost my brother, and my family was falling apart. And Lizzie told me it had happened. She seemed so defiant about it. So smug...”

  “I had asked you to marry me,” Lucas reminded her without getting up, his voice low, his eyes shuttered.

  “And I told you I wanted to wait until after I’d gotten a college degree before getting married,” she replied. “You said you’d wait, but I knew you were getting
impatient with my hesitation about making love with you.”

  “You wanted to wait until the timing was right. I was impatient, but I understood. I didn’t turn to Lizzie to anyone else—because you weren’t yet ready for a physical relationship.”

  “I thought you had,” she whispered. “I knew there had been other girls before me. I thought you’d gotten tired of waiting for me.”

  “You were wrong. And if you’d talked to me the night I called, I would have told you so.”

  Rachel looked blindly at the rock wall. “I was too young,” she repeated in a whisper. “I didn’t know what to do. Who to believe.”

  “I didn’t know Lizzie had talked to you,” Lucas conceded. “I didn’t know about the charm.”

  Rachel dashed impatiently at her damp cheek. “I should have talked to you. I thought there would be time—I thought maybe you could explain everything, somehow, once I was ready to hear it—but then you were gone.”

  “It seemed the best thing for everyone. For you. For Emily. And maybe for me, too. I couldn’t stay in Honoria knowing I was suspected of murder, and wondering if you thought I was guilty as well.”

  She met his eyes squarely. “I thought a lot of angry things about you, Lucas, but I never once belived you’d killed my brother.”

  “You know now that I had no alibi.”

  “That doesn’t matter. You didn’t kill Roger. You wouldn’t have.”

  Lucas sighed and pushed a hand through his hair. “Which brings us back to square one. Roger died on these bluffs and neither of us knows why.”

  “He found your stepmother’s bracelet and my father’s wallet, and we don’t know what that means either.”

  “And now the bracelet has disappeared again, and we don’t know if it’s a coincidence or connected in some way to Roger’s wild theory.”

  Rachel sighed. “It’s all very confusing.”

  So much had changed during the past few days. So many things she’d believed had been turned upside down. So much had happened fifteen years ago that she hadn’t known about.

  Time had seemed to fall away with every revelation, making it feel almost like yesterday that all these things had taken place.