Doing It Over (A Most Likely to Novel Book 1)

by Catherine Bybee

  She pointed toward the truck Luke was driving. “Just Luke.”

  Luke shot his hand in the air with a little wave and a smile.

  Nathan shuffled his feet before stepping inside the burger joint. It was after two, and the place wasn’t filled to the brim, but it was noisy.

  They found a small table by the window and sat.

  “Thank you for meeting with me.”

  “My attorney suggested I not,” he said.

  “Mine, too,” she lied.

  “Why am I here, Melanie?”

  “I need to know why. Why are you doing this?”

  He looked around the restaurant. The place was filled with teenagers and young twentysomethings. No police or lawyers to be found.

  “I want to know my daughter.”

  If that was so, then why wasn’t he asking about her?

  “Why now?”

  “I’m in a better place now.”

  Words he said the first time he walked into town.

  “Okay.”

  His eyes swung to hers. “Okay, what?”

  “I think you should get to know Hope, too. Maybe you should come over for dinner.”

  He seemed shocked.

  “You’re serious?”

  “Right now she’s scared to death you’re going to take her away. I can’t have her afraid of her own father, can I?”

  “I don’t think my attorney will think that’s all right.”

  Scurrying away already. What a shock.

  “It doesn’t have to be tonight.”

  His head nodded like one of those bobblehead dolls. “Probably something we should plan.”

  “Right, for Hope’s sake.”

  His untrusting eyes narrowed. “Why the change of heart?”

  Melanie attempted to act unaffected. “I know I’m not going to win.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re smarter than me.” He always told her how his intelligence outweighed hers when they were together. A part of his ego she didn’t feed then.

  “You didn’t used to think so.”

  “Yeah, well . . . I do now. You managed to come up with a marriage certificate, and we both know that didn’t happen.”

  He left a smile on his face but didn’t say a thing.

  A smile wasn’t being recorded.

  “What I don’t really understand is why. Why fake that kind of thing?”

  He leaned forward, lowered his voice. “I told you I wanted to get married.”

  “I suggested we wait.”

  “Well, I’m a man of action, not words.”

  “But I didn’t sign that paper.”

  He huffed a small breath. “Yes, you did.”

  “When?” C’mon Nathan . . . be cocky you son of a bitch.

  “Right about the time you were signing all the papers for Hope’s legal name after she was born.”

  Melanie had one of those moments when the light bulb goes on and everything makes sense. The delivery had been hard, and the doctors had given her medications for pain. She remembered signing stuff, like every new parent. They argued about Hope’s last name, but Nathan had relented after she signed . . . like it didn’t really matter.

  “You slipped the papers in the mix. It makes sense now.”

  “So let’s talk about making this divorce happen as quickly as possible,” Nathan said.

  “Considering I didn’t know I was married, I think that’s a brilliant idea.”

  “You’ll cooperate?”

  No, but he didn’t need to hear that. “Sure. I never thought I’d keep Hope to myself forever. Are you really ready to be a dad?”

  He hesitated. The man couldn’t even say the words. “O-of course. Hope needs a dad.”

  It was time to wrap this up . . . she had what she wanted. “Do you think we might give her some time? After all, there’s been a lot of drama in her life.”

  “I think that’s reasonable. No one could argue she’s been through a lot.” And he would look like a caring father if he didn’t push at this point. All he really wanted was the divorce and good standing with his family. After the American Fugitive program, he probably realized that sympathy would lie in her court. He really wasn’t stupid.

  An asshole, but not stupid.

  “They have a lead, by the way.”

  “A what?”

  She placed the strap of her purse over her shoulder, knowing he cared about the case of finding their daughter’s attacker about as much as he cared to buy pizza from a burger joint.

  “Yeah . . . apparently the fight Wyatt and Luke got into at the bar wasn’t an accident.”

  Nathan sat silent.

  “You know about the fight. That social worker you sicced on me told you, I’m sure.”

  “I heard about the fight. What do you mean it wasn’t an accident?”

  Good, he wasn’t playing stupid. She hated when he did that.

  “One of the guys involved came into the station after he saw the footage on TV.”

  Nathan’s face turned white.

  “Which one?”

  “Which who?”

  She saw his white face start to turn red. Something he never did control when he got mad. She used to tease him that he’d make a terrible attorney if his parents ever convinced him to finish law school because he had a horrible poker face. “Which guy came in?”

  “Buddy. Jo said it was Buddy.”

  Nathan’s shoulders slumped, the smile reappeared. “So they are still looking for Ty.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yeah, they think they have a lead . . .” Her palms started to itch. “How did you know his name?”

  Nathan removed his phone from his pocket and appeared to check the time. “Whose name?”

  “Ty.”

  He hesitated, looked down. “You told me.”

  “No. No, I didn’t.”

  “Just now. You told me Buddy and Ty watched the footage . . .”

  “No, Nathan, I didn’t say their names.”

  And suddenly his body language made sense. Shock, surprise, unease . . . poker face fully disengaged.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “I didn’t send anyone into that bar to fight your boyfriend.”

  It was time to call in a little help. “Jeez, you give me a headache. Was it just to make Wyatt look bad? To make me look like a bad mom?”

  He reached across the table and grabbed her arm. “I didn’t do anything.”

  She yanked free. “Is that what Ty is going to say when they pick him up?”

  Again, his face lost color.

  “It’s kinda hard to practice law when you’re behind bars.”

  He reached for her again, and a hand came down on his. “No touching.” Luke offered a deadly stare.

  Nathan scrambled out of Luke’s grip and glared. “You’re both crazy.” He pointed at Melanie. “I’ll see you in court.”

  “Look forward to it.”

  They both watched as he walked out and stormed to his car.

  “Did we get all that?”

  Luke smiled. “Every word.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  They’d been gone for over an hour and the rain was pelting the side of the inn like an unrelenting hammering from a bad neighbor on a Sunday morning.

  Wyatt jumped for the phone when it rang. “Yeah?”

  “It’s me.” Hearing Melanie’s voice sounded so sweet.

  “Hey, darlin’. How did it go?”

  “I definitely got what I came for.”

  “He told you about the marriage certificate?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t think we’ll need it.”

  “Really, why?”

  “Put your dad on the other line.”

  Wyatt w
alked to the foyer phone and handed the receiver to his father.

  “What did you find out?” William asked once they were both listening.

  “I think Nathan hired the guys to pull Wyatt into the bar fight.”

  “Are you sure?” Wyatt asked.

  “Luke came to the same conclusion and he didn’t even see the reaction on Nathan’s face when he was trying hard to hold back his thoughts. Bottom line, he knew the names of the guys who fought you both. Luke didn’t even know and he was there. When I told Nathan that Ty was getting picked up for questioning, he—”

  “Started to get rough!” Wyatt heard Luke yell from what sounded like the inside of the truck.

  “He did what?”

  “He grabbed my arm. I’m fine. But yeah, he was pissed. Then Luke came in and Nathan stormed off.”

  “And you have that all on tape?” William asked.

  “Every word.”

  “We need to call Jo.”

  “Already done,” Melanie informed him.

  “Are you on your way home?”

  “Yeah, pulling onto the main road now. Raining like crazy. I didn’t want you to worry.”

  Wyatt placed a hand over his chest. “I’ll worry until you’re back. But take your time, I don’t want a delay due to an accident.”

  It was hard to hang up, but he did anyway.

  It took a few minutes for the gravity of Melanie’s words to sink in.

  “Talk about setting your ex up for a fall.” For a moment, Wyatt thought his father was giving Nathan kudos. “Makes me wonder just how far the guy would go.”

  “Hiring a couple of guys to beat me up is really out there, don’t you think?”

  Wyatt watched his father pace. “Yeah, but it isn’t like you and Melanie are living together. One piece of the puzzle helps the overall case . . . but you alone, bar fighting wildcard and all, wouldn’t give a judge what he needs to take Hope away from her mom.”

  “He needed to stack the deck,” Wyatt assumed. “After all, at the end of the day, he’s just a deadbeat dad who skipped out on his girlfriend and their child. He wants to come out looking like the better of the two parents, and what better way than to suggest the ex is hanging around with criminals?”

  Wyatt’s father paused, looked around the room. “But how far would he go? Hire one thug, two . . . what about three?”

  “Are you suggesting Nathan hired Mr. Lewis?”

  “I’m suggesting anything is possible. You were here when Lewis showed up the first time. Was that before or after Nathan came around?”

  “After.”

  “Well, I’d be interested in hearing what Nathan Stone has to say to the FBI when they pull him in for questioning.”

  “You and me both.”

  “You need to disappear,” Nathan yelled into his cell phone as he took the corner a little wide.

  “What makes you think I haven’t?”

  Why couldn’t the man just do what he’d been paid to do? Why did he have to improvise along the way? “You’re still answering your phone.”

  “That’s because every time I see your call I picture another payday. You paid so well the first two times, why say no to a third?”

  “I don’t have any more money to shell out. Take what I gave you and get out of the country. If they can’t find you, they’ll have nothing on me.”

  The windshield wipers were going at Mach speed, the road winding as he made his way back to Eugene.

  “I wouldn’t be too sure. That pretty little ex of yours was wearing a wire, you know.”

  Nathan slammed on his brakes. “What?”

  “Whoa, careful, mate, you wouldn’t want a car accident on this road.”

  Oh, fuck, oh, fuck . . . Nathan twisted in his seat, looked around the car, and spotted the shadow of one following from behind. The fog and rain brought down his visibility to almost nothing.

  “What the hell?” he said into the phone. “Why are you even in the state? Everyone is looking for you.”

  “No, mate . . . everyone is looking for Mr. Lewis.”

  And Ruther, aka Patrick Lewis, was a man of many disguises, which was why Nathan had hired him in the first place. His family had money but had cut him off years ago, and Ruther had a little problem. A problem that Nathan could use to gain respect from his family. He’d sent Ruther into Miss Gina’s inn as a spy . . . find the dirt on Melanie and report back. Yeah, he knew about his unusual taste in little girls, which he had every intention of using in court to make the judge see Nathan’s need to remove Hope from Mel’s care. But then the pervert decided to murder his kid. A part of him hurt with that, but a bigger part of him worried that everything would come back on him. That Ruther would say he was hired to remove Hope from the equation, or something equally disturbing.

  “Why are you following me?”

  “Making sure you get back safely. Keeping that FBI agent from following you.”

  The car sat idling, the smoke from the exhaust the only visible sign that there was someone in the thing. “What agent?”

  “You really have no idea how deep you’re in, do you?”

  Nathan was shaking, couldn’t control it. “Stop following me.”

  He hung up and put his foot on the gas.

  Ruther followed. The road continued on a steady incline and narrowed. At the top, he knew it leveled out, which would give him the space he needed to pick up his speed.

  Ruther pulled close behind, making Nathan’s blood pressure shoot high.

  When his phone rang, he jumped.

  He answered without looking at the number. “Yeah?”

  “Nathan?” The voice was that of a woman.

  “Yeah?”

  Ruther flashed his lights and Nathan picked up speed.

  “It’s Sheriff Ward. We’d like to ask you to come into the station and answer a few questions.”

  “Screw you, bitch.”

  “We can do this the hard way, Nathan.”

  He took his eyes off the road as he ended the call and tossed the phone aside.

  When he looked up, he felt the back end of his car lurch and the wheel jerk to the left.

  And then, as they often say in basketball . . . it was nothing but air, but there was no net to catch him as his car tumbled off the cliff.

  “He hung up.” Jo pressed End and smiled at Agent Burton.

  “Not surprising.”

  “I’ll have a warrant and court orders by tomorrow afternoon.”

  Burton had driven back through town after watching the interaction between Melanie and Nathan from across the street. When she saw Nathan speed out of the parking lot, she ran to the back of the restaurant to retrieve her car, only to find one of her tires flat. By the time she had it changed, Nathan was long gone and Jo had already called her.

  “I’m going to go ahead and drive to Eugene tonight and get this going. We don’t want any delays.”

  “I don’t want Nathan getting away. He’s bound to find a flight to Mexico tonight if in fact he hired Mr. Lewis to kill his own daughter.” The thought made her sick to her stomach.

  Burton left the station with the promise of calling the next day.

  An hour later a call came in to the station about a car off the side of the road. It took thirty more minutes for her to reach the scene. When she did, Jo realized she was the last one to talk to Nathan before he died.

  Poor Agent Burton didn’t even have a chance to check into the standard hotel room before Jo was calling the woman back. The point on the road where Nathan’s car had gone off was on a curve, making it more dangerous to get a team down to retrieve his body.

  “You think he drove off on purpose?” Burton stood on the muddy road looking down at the wreckage.

  Jo looked down. “I think he was too much of a pansy to end his own life.
This guy hired people to do his dirty work.”

  Burton walked over the road, an umbrella covering her head. “No skid marks.”

  “He could have hydroplaned.”

  “The gravel on the side of the road is barely kicked up. If he was on his brakes, we would see it there,” Burton said.

  “No obvious evidence he was trying to stop.”

  “Kinda suggests suicide.”

  “If the man knew the area, I’d agree. But unless he knew this road clipped off like this . . . there aren’t any other places the road narrows this much all the way to the main highway.”

  “If he didn’t do it on purpose, and there are no marks on the road to suggest he was swerving to avoid hitting something . . . then what, brake failure?”

  Jo turned to look at the landscape. “If your brakes failed, wouldn’t you aim for the other side?” There was a good five yards of a sloping face of the hill off to the right. “I’d take my chances with a wall. Air bags being what they are.”

  “What does that leave . . . homicide?” Burton asked. “Sadly, the main suspects I see all live in River Bend.”

  Jo nodded. “And all were present and accounted for at Miss Gina’s. Which leaves . . .”

  “An accomplice?”

  “Someone cleaning up loose ends.”

  “Yeah, someone worth dying for.”

  Jo did not like where her thoughts led. Could their tattooed Mr. Lewis have returned? “How often do assailants return to the scene of the crime?”

  “C’mon, Jo . . . you’re a smart cop. You’re jumpy because you know the victims in all this.”

  The rain was dripping off the slicker Jo had over her uniform—without a gutter on her hat—it dripped over all sides.

  “I’m saying . . . Nathan didn’t commit suicide. He is a wimp . . . was a wimp. He didn’t have the stomach to start his own bar fight, so he hires a couple guys. Then he hires someone else to drive up and down this very road.” Jo pointed to the pavement. “You only have to drive it a few times before you know this curve and cliff are here. This guy acts as some kind of salesman, and stays at the inn. We know all that was a lie. We know Mr. Lewis rented a car using the same ID he had at the inn and then disappeared from there. The man didn’t even have a destination on the other side. He simply drove through for the purpose of what? I don’t think for a minute he stumbled upon Miss Gina’s inn, do you?”