by Jami Alden
“Of course you do,” Krista said, raising a slender hand. “I’m sorry if I offended you.”
Sean wanted to roll his eyes at the way Frank seemed to melt under Krista’s smile. He turned to her with a frown. If she thought she was going to get to him with this new, charming side of her, she was seriously mistaken.
“Did you figure out what was wrong after getting a closer look?” Krista asked. Sean’s ears pricked up at the nervous undercurrent in her voice.
Sean’s eyes glazed over as Frank launched into a litany of possible reasons for the electrical failure and then concluded, “But honestly, it’s almost impossible to tell at this point.”
Was it just him or did Krista breathe a little sigh of relief? It froze in her chest when she caught him looking. “Well, thanks, Frank. I’ll guess I’ll check back in with you Monday.”
“Guess I’m stuck here,” Krista said as they walked down the street. Though she was fairly tall—Sean would guess about five seven or five eight, and those damn legs of hers started somewhere up around her armpits—she had to practically run to keep up with him as he rushed to Wendy Trager’s bed-and-breakfast.
“Do you know how much this woman charges? It’s not going to be really expensive, is it?” Krista said, slightly breathless in a way that filled Sean’s head with all kinds of ways he could make her breathe fast.
He shook the images out of his head. “You’re a lawyer. I thought you’d be rolling in it.”
She gave a snort. “I work for the government and it’s a recession. They spent more to keep you alive on death row than they pay me.”
He almost tripped over his own feet as he shot her a startled look. There it was again, that flash of inappropriate under that perfectly buttoned-up surface.
“I’m sorry,” she said, clapping her hand to her mouth. “That was totally out of line.”
“It’s okay,” he said, stifling a chuckle.
It should have offended him, just as her making fun of his diagnosis should have offended him. But the fact that she blurted it out without a thought, like her internal editor went out for a quick smoke, made her seem actually human underneath the controlled professional she showed to the world. Made her appealing.
Likeable, even.
Oh fuck, he didn’t even want to go there. He was startled from his thoughts as his shoulder slammed into someone who let out a loud grunt on impact. “Excuse me,” Sean said. He looked up and registered two men, dressed similarly to him in plaid flannel shirts, boots, and jeans. But there was something about them, the flat look in the eyes of the blond guy in particular, that made Sean’s neck prickle as they walked by.
He looked at them over his shoulder, but they didn’t look back as they continued down the street.
“What?” Krista said.
Sean shook his head. “Nothing.” But the prickle wouldn’t go away, that nagging sense that the enemy was close, crouched behind the next rock waiting to take him out. He kept his eye on the two men until they rounded the corner and he shook his head.
He was just paranoid, he told himself. That’s what happened when your best friend betrayed you and everyone who knows you is willing to believe you’re a monster.
And the woman next to him, the one he couldn’t seem to block out, had her own part to play in that. Sean seized on that resentment, shoving away any feelings of attraction or, God forbid, affection as he reached for the door of the B&B.
And found it locked. He knocked a couple times and then ducked his head to look in one of the glass panes that framed the hand-carved door. “Shit. She must have gone out.” He straightened up. “I’ll go get your bag and you can wait over at Marty’s until she opens up.”
“Wait, you’re just going to dump me off? What if she doesn’t come back?”
Sean wanted to tell her it wasn’t his problem. Wanted to tell her it was too damn bad, that it would be no less than she deserved for coming up here uninvited and trying to force him to dredge up a part of his life he had no interest in revisiting.
It was the shiver that did it, barely perceptible beneath the bulk of the borrowed down coat that hung almost to her knees, as she braced herself against the rapidly cooling breeze.
He muttered a curse under his breath and grabbed her by the arm, tugging her across the street. “Let’s go get something to eat while we wait.”
The scents of beer and fried food greeted him as they walked into Marty’s pub and Sean braced himself. Fortunately, the place was relatively empty during the low season, and the customers were mostly people he knew, at least by sight if not name. No tourists to do the double take, the Isn’t that? and then bend low to whisper over their hamburgers and fries, followed by another assessing look as they wondered if maybe he hadn’t gotten away with murder after all.
“Sean, darlin’,” Nancy McFee, the late Marty’s wife, called as she rushed across the restaurant to greet him. Pushing sixty, Nancy was still holding it together with her dyed red hair and busty figure that flirted with matronly plumpness. Her arms were flung as wide as her smile as she rushed to greet him. Sean fought not to choke on her cloud of perfume as he suffered a tight hug and a kiss on the cheek. “It feels like an age since you’ve been here. It’s not good for a man as handsome as you to keep all to himself up in that lonely cabin of yours.”
“I’ve been busy,” he said, grimacing as Nancy rubbed at his cheek with a red-tipped thumb, scrubbing away at the smear of lipstick she’d no doubt left on his chin.
“But I see you have someone with you—” Nancy’s bright smile faded abruptly as recognition set in. “You’re her—you’re that prosecutor.”
“Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Krista Slater,” Krista said and held out her hand. She didn’t react at all when Nancy gave a sniff of disdain.
“Can’t imagine what you’re doing here with her. What she did to you was unforgivable.”
“No argument here,” Krista said softly.
“To be fair, Nate Brewster was the one who framed me,” Sean said, the words cutting him as deeply as ever. He had no idea why he felt the urge to defend Krista, but his mouth moved almost without his consent. “Krista was doing her job.”
“Well, if you ask me, she was doing a piss poor job of it. How anyone thought you could be capable of murder is beyond me. Known him all his life, I have, and I never believed it, not for a minute.”
Yes, she had. But Sean didn’t bother to remind her of what she’d said to the reporter from the Seattle Tribune after his conviction, about how you thought you could know someone and never see the evil lurking inside. Let her have her false memories and her overdone affection if it made her feel like she was making up for thinking the worst of him. “Thanks, Nance. I see my regular table’s empty. Be a sweetheart and bring us a couple of pints.”
He led Krista to the corner booth next to the window, nodding at the handful of other patrons. Many of them he’d known since childhood. They all gave him the same overeager smiles and friendly waves, as though that could erase the fact that all of them, like Nancy, had at one point believed he was capable of raping and murdering a woman in the most brutal way imaginable.
He slid into the booth and cracked open the window. “You don’t have to,” he said as Krista leaned over to the window on her side to do the same, but he felt the tension in his shoulders unravel a degree as the cold breeze blew across his face. “You’re going to be cold.”
“I’m fine. The heat’s cranked up so much I need to strip off a few layers.”
Jesus, he wished she wouldn’t use words like strip.
The menu had barely changed in twenty-five years, but Sean studied it like his life depended on it, wondering how a woman could be sexy stripping off a parka that made her look like the Michelin Man.
“We’re causing quite the stir,” Krista said after a few minutes. Sean looked up. Sure enough, the handful of regular customers were sneaking glances at their booth, informed by Nancy of Krista’s identity, if the glares were anyth
ing to go by.
“Not every day a former convict has dinner with the prosecutor who put him on death row,” he bit out, angry with himself that he hadn’t anticipated this. Shit, he should have ignored her woeful look and left her in front of the B&B to freeze, but no, he had to be the nice guy and take her someplace warm, keep her company. You’d think he would have learned, especially after what had happened with Evangeline Gordon, that his stupid fucking chivalrous streak never brought him anything but trouble.
Now it got him here, across the table from a woman he wanted despite all logic and common sense, trying to ignore curious stares that made his skin crawl.
Nancy came by to take their order herself, her glare never leaving Krista’s face.
“If looks could kill,” Krista muttered.
“You’ll get used to it,” he lied. “I did.”
“I get a lot of dirty looks in my line of work.” Krista slumped against the leather cushioning of the booth.
She was quiet for a few minutes, staring out the window at the light traffic on Main Street. Their food was delivered quickly. Krista smiled and thanked Nancy, never even flinching when her bowl of scalding hot chili threatened to teeter over in her lap. Krista calmly steadied the bowl and picked up her spoon. “You’ve been coming here all your life?” Her blond eyebrows arched as she lifted a spoonful of chili to her mouth.
Sean nodded and swallowed a mouthful of battered cod before he answered. “My grandfather built the cabin back in the fifties. I came up every summer for at least a month until my sophomore year, and I had football camp starting in late July.”
“Why come back here?” she asked, indicating the mix of curious and hostile stares glued to their booth. “Why not a fresh start?”
Sean shook his head. “It’s the closest place to home I have,” he replied. He didn’t want to delve into the details, how after his parents’ death and moving in with his grandparents he’d felt the need to hang on to the one place that was a constant, the one place where he’d known nothing but happiness. After he’d been released from prison, ping-ponging around Seattle and trying to get a handle on his life, he’d come back here in an attempt to regain some sense of belonging.
He didn’t say any of it, but the way Krista was looking at him it was as though she knew.
“Anyway, there’s no such thing as a fresh start for me.”
Krista’s mouth pulled tight. “No, I don’t suppose there is.” She finished off her chili, sat back with a sigh, and picked up her beer. “So you played football,” she said with a faint smile. “Why am I not surprised?”
“Not just played,” Sean said, unable to stop himself from smiling back. “Captain.”
Krista laughed and took a sip of her beer and then trailed her finger down the damp glass. Sean forced his eyes to stay locked on her face and not on that slender finger sliding up, down, up, down. She took another sip, her pink tongue chasing a droplet of beer across her bottom lip. Sean shifted, his pants suddenly two sizes too small in the crotch. “Did you play sports?” he said in a desperate effort to distract himself.
But her sly smile just made him harder. “I was a nerd. Braces. Glasses. The whole nine yards. My dad thought sports would be good for me, but I was too uncoordinated to do anything but run track.”
“No hurdles,” he smiled.
“Or javelins. I would have lanced the mascot.”
Sean was shocked to find himself for the second time that day laughing at something she said. He looked around and caught the stares and realized how they must look. Like any other couple. Talking. Laughing. Flirting.
Like a normal date, the kind he hadn’t had—hadn’t even wanted to have—in over three years.
For a split second it felt so good he was almost ready to give himself up to the illusion of normalcy.
Except the whole thing was completely ab-fucking-normal, starting and ending with the woman sitting across from him. Jesus Fucking Christ, what the hell did he think he was doing? What the hell did he think she was doing—flirting, acting all interested so she could lure him out, get him to help her on this misguided need for the truth? As if that would ever help anyone.
“So football, that’s how you got to be friends with Jimmy Caparulo, right? Before you joined the army together and met Nate?”
And just like that she confirmed his suspicions. “Damn, I gotta give you credit. You’re good. Subtle. You almost made me believe it.”
To her credit, she didn’t bother to pretend to not know what he was talking about. “Look, I get it. You want nothing to do with my investigation. But before he died, Jimmy said he should have told you something—he should have helped you. If you can think of anything, no matter how random, maybe it will help me figure out the truth—”
Sean threw a couple of bills on the table and stood up. “I told you. I have no idea what was going on with Jimmy and Nate.” Except that he had trusted both of them, loved them like brothers. “Whatever it was, it didn’t involve me.” He snatched his coat from the booth and headed for the door.
“Except for the part where Nate framed you for murder and involved Jimmy in the cover-up,” she called after him.
Sean’s stomach twisted, the fish and chips sitting like a bowling ball in his gut. “And now they’re both dead, so I guess they got what they deserved.” The other diners were staring, transfixed. Sean kept his gaze on the door, careful not to make eye contact with anyone.
As he looked through the pub’s front window he could see that the B&B was still dark. “Nance,” he called. “Do you know when Wendy will be back?”
Nancy looked up from the cash register. “I believe she’s back next week.”
“Next week?”
Nancy looked up, startled at the menace in his voice. “Yes, she went to Seattle to visit her sister like she always does this time of year.”
“Then who’s running the B and B?”
Nancy frowned at him. “It’s closed for the season.”
Oh, shit. “Closed,” he parroted like an idiot.
“We don’t get enough people in the shoulder seasons.”
“What about the place farther out on Highway Two?”
“They’re not opening up until Memorial Day. No one is. If you need a room, you should be able to find something in Wenatchee.”
Sean nodded curtly, grabbed Krista’s arm, and yanked her out the door.
“Wenatchee is nearly twenty miles away,” Krista protested. “How the hell am I supposed to get back to my car?” she said.
“Not my problem, just like this whole fact-finding mission isn’t my problem. You’re lucky I’m feeling generous enough to give you a ride.”
They reached the truck and he climbed inside. She rapped sharply on the window until he unlocked her door. She flung herself into the seat with an irritated huff. She opened her mouth, but before she could utter a sound he gunned the engine and turned on the stereo full blast, the roar of Alice in Chains drowning out any questions.
Krista reached out and snapped off the stereo and did her best not to shrink under Sean’s menacing stare. She’d definitely caught glimpses of a nice guy lurking underneath, but Sean could turn on the mean like few people she’d ever encountered. And in her line of work that was saying something.
But despite the real, justifiable rage she could feel simmering through his blood—toward her, toward the friends who had betrayed him, toward the friends who’d lost faith in him—she trusted him not to hurt her. Trusted that he was the kind of man who wouldn’t use his far superior strength against a woman.
If only she’d had that insight years ago.
“I came a long way to talk to you, and I’m not going to leave without something—”
His hand flashed out and turned the stereo back on. She switched it off. “God, do you have to be so juvenile? I just want to talk a little bit—”
“I don’t have any answers,” he snapped. “I don’t know how to make it plainer.”
“Did you
know we traced the ownership of Club One back to a dummy corporation linked to Nate?”
Sean’s gaze flicked in her direction. “So Jimmy worked for him?”
Finally, a response. “No, at the time Jimmy was contracted through a company called West Hall Security. Apparently that’s where they got most of their security staff up until recently.” Jimmy had quit West Hall shortly after Sean’s arrest and had worked as a private contractor until his death.
Sean’s hands tightened on the wheel and Krista’s stomach dipped as the road made a steep decent down the mountainside. “That’s right. Jimmy tried to recruit me, right after I got back to town.”
“Before you had your falling out?” Krista kept her gaze pinned to Sean’s face as she tried to ignore the sheer drop-off on her side of the road. She wasn’t usually a nervous passenger, but the guardrail along the highway was little more than window dressing against the hundred-foot fall.
A curt nod was his only response. Krista started to press him, but the words caught in her throat as they saw the sharp curve coming up. “Uh, maybe you should slow down?”
“I’m trying,” Sean said through gritted teeth.
“Try harder!”
The engine screamed and the smell of burning clutch permeated the truck cab. Just then, bright lights flooded the interior. Krista looked back and saw the outline of a dark SUV looming inches from the truck’s bumper. “Holy shit, they’re going to hit us. You need to get out of the way!”
Sean pulled the car over to the left, riding the yellow line so the SUV wasn’t directly behind them. The other side of the road was thickly forested with old-growth evergreens but Krista would take a head-on with a tree trunk over going off a cliff any day. Krista closed her eyes, praying another car wasn’t around the next corner. Though at the speed they were going, it wasn’t likely they were going to make it. “Why aren’t you slowing down?”
“Accelerator’s stuck,” Sean said, his eerie calm doing nothing to slow her heartbeat. The SUV thumped up against the bumper and sent them hurtling toward the guardrail and then it screeched to a halt just before the curve.