Victoria House (Haunted Hearts Series Book 2)

by Denise Moncrief

  “That isn’t so.” Josh stalled his rebuttal, then burst out with a hint at the truth. “Well, maybe it’s a little true.”

  “I think Bennett is right. I got a call from one of the DEA agents that you met with the other day. He told me one of his informants said there’d been a dispute over who controlled the network. Maybe Jared Crenshaw lost that battle.”

  Josh nodded. “No wonder Lucy threatened Courtney if she talked to us. We need to find her. Lucy could have already done something to her.”

  Gray cleared his throat. “Sheriff, there are some things I need to tell you. About what happened at Laurel Heights and why I called Shaw Bennett in to handle it. And about some things that happened years ago before I applied to the department. But before I tell you those things, there’s someone I need to talk to. And I need to go see Caroline’s mother. She should hear this from me.”

  “Things you need to tell me about he past, huh? It’s about time you came clean, Grayson.”

  Tori glanced between the two men. How much did Halsey know and how much did he suspect?

  “When I’m through, I’ll come straight to you.”

  Gray then turned to his old friend, Josh McCord. “Will you do me a favor?”

  Josh smiled, a thin, tired smile. “Depends.”

  “Take Tori over to Ashley’s house, make sure Ashley is all right, and wait for me until I get there. Okay?”

  Tori was about to object, but then Gray took her by the hand and led her away from the other two men.

  “I’m going to talk to Haskins about Jeremy.”

  “Gray—”

  “Wait for me. When I’m through talking to Caroline’s mother and telling Haskins the truth about Jeremy, I’m leaving town for a while. Will you come with me?”

  She hesitated. If she left with Gray, she knew without a doubt, she’d be with him forever. Was that what she wanted? Yes, it was.

  She planted a kiss on his lips, a kiss that burned with a passion she wished she could indulge, right then, right there. She never wanted to take the hard-won pleasures of life for granted any longer. She wanted Gray and he wanted her, and together they were going to engage in the pursuit of happiness.

  “I’ll be waiting for you.” She stroked his cheek, tears threatening her eyes. She hoped to God Gray came back from his meeting with Haskins. If the meeting didn’t go well, Gray might not survive.

  ****

  Telling Caroline’s mother that her daughter was dead and, even worse, how she had died was the hardest thing Gray had ever done in his life. Even so, what he was about to do would be even more difficult. He was about to intentionally lie to someone about how his son had died.

  Haskins’s live-in housekeeper showed Gray to the back patio where he waited for Fred by the pool, pacing back and forth along the crystal blue water’s edge, anxious to get the confrontation over with.

  “Grayson,” Haskins called to him as he exited through the sliding patio door.

  Gray nodded his acknowledgment of the greeting.

  “I know you didn’t come all the way out here for a social visit. What’s on your mind?”

  “Can we sit down? This might take a while.” He needed to drop into a chair before he fell down.

  The ordeal he’d just lived through had stolen his energy. More than likely, he should have waited until he was stronger to approach Haskins with his confession, but he wanted to get out of town as soon as possible, and he wouldn’t have been able to rest in some other place knowing what he needed to do back in Fairview.

  The only reason he’d come back to Fairview would be to arrange for the burial of his now ex-wife. It’d be awhile before the coroner released her body. That would give him time to rest before the coming ordeal of facing the entire town. They’d all expect him to give her a traditional burial, hoping to get a glimpse of him at the funeral just so they could judge him. He wouldn’t give them the show they craved. He and Caroline’s mother had agreed to a closed casket, private burial.

  “Is this official?” Haskins asked as he motioned toward the patio furniture.

  The question broke Gray out of his morbid introspection about the final interment of his wife’s remains. He took a seat, propping on the edge of a deck chair. “I’m on leave of absence at the moment, but when I come back...” He’d almost rattled off his plans, something Haskins didn’t need to know.

  “What brings you out here, then?”

  “I’ll get to the point.” He needed more time, but he could stall no longer.

  Haskins nodded, a wary expression on his face.

  “I know what happened to Jeremy.”

  The man’s jaw tightened. His eyes turned to a cold steel blue. “Maybe you should tell this to Halsey.”

  “No. I’ll tell Halsey in due time, but I really think you need to hear this first.”

  “Go ahead then.” A look of dread spread across Haskins’s features.

  An unexpected reaction. Why would he fear what Gray had to say.

  “I’m responsible for his death.” He waited for the inevitable condemnation. It didn’t come. Gray stared at Haskins’s blank expression and then cleared his throat. “Didn’t you hear me?”

  “You think I don’t know that already?”

  “I don’t know what you know.”

  He had practiced exactly what he would say depending on Haskins’s reaction. None of his pretend scenarios included Haskins already knowing he was involved, if not responsible.

  “Who were you defending?”

  His blunt question took Gray by surprise, but maybe it shouldn’t have. Jeremy had a reputation for taking what he wanted whether the girl wanted to give it to him or not.

  “I know what my son was like, Mitchell.”

  The sound of his given name on the man’s tongue made ice water flow in his veins. Something about the way he said it caused his stomach to churn.

  “In a few years, I’ll have to put three young people through college that I can’t even acknowledge as my grandchildren. I knew very well what Jeremy was like.”

  Gray tried to articulate his incredulity. “So you’re saying…”

  Had Haskins known what had happened to Jeremy all these years and never did anything about it?

  “You and the Rivers girl. You’re alibi was always thin. I never believed the two of you were together the way you said you were. She was that McCord kid’s girlfriend if I recall correctly. That means you caught Jeremy doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. What did he do to her?”

  Gray sucked in a deep breath. Reciting what Jeremy had done would not be easy, even after all the time that had passed. He closed his eyes, better to control his reaction to the recollection of events.

  “He ripped her shirt off. Busted her lip. Knocked her to the ground. You can guess what he intended. She fought him. He had a knife at her throat when I pulled him off her...” Everything he’d said so far was the absolute truth, but he still needed to shield Ashley. “We managed to get into my truck. I hoped we could get away from him, but I ran into him. It was an accident. Just an accident. He ran in front of the truck. I couldn’t stop in time.”

  It had actually been Ashley behind the wheel. He’d tossed her the keys and yelled at her to leave while he dealt with Jeremy, but Jeremy had struggled out of his grasp. Ashley had raced for the truck with Jeremy running after her. She’d yanked open the door, started the engine, slammed the gear into drive, and punched the accelerator just as Jeremy ran in front of her. An accident. A tragic stupid accident. One that would have never happened if Ashley hadn’t been foolish enough to drink too much and get into Jeremy’s car at the Hot Spot. Gray wouldn’t have rescued her in time if he hadn’t seen them leave together and followed them.

  “Why didn’t you own up to it, son? You’ve always struck me as the kind of man that didn’t back off what was right. I thought Sally raised you better than that.”

  He wished Haskins would leave his mother and her questionable mothering skills out of it.
He needed to push the old man to focus on his own behavior. “Would you have let me or Ashley get by with it? Wouldn’t I be spending the rest of my life in prison, regardless of the circumstances?”

  Haskins seemed to lose ten years in one second. “Do you really think I’m that unreasonable?”

  “That’s the way things work in this county, isn’t it?” He unwisely allowed his opinion of Haskins’s stranglehold on Hill County to vibrate in his voice.

  “I wouldn’t have let you go to jail, Mitchell.”

  Haskins’s voice was so calm that it unsettled Gray, made his already shaky stomach tie into knots.

  “Why not?”

  Haskins leaned forward.

  “I couldn’t let Sally’s boy go to jail.”

  Gray sensed the oncoming storm. Years of working in law enforcement had taught him when a suspect was about to unload the truth on him.

  “Hasn’t Sally ever hinted at who...at who fathered you?”

  “Whoa!” Gray jumped to his feet, shoved the chair back with the force of his action, and shook his head in disbelief. What was Haskins implying?

  “Who do you think supported your mother all these years? Did you ever ask her where her money came from? She couldn’t have lived like that on her income.”

  Gray had never wanted to know who his father was. He had spent years resenting the man who had left his mother to raise him alone.

  “That’s a lie.”

  It couldn’t be true.

  “You see, son…”

  “Don’t call me son.”

  He needed to leave in a hurry, a real big hurry. What the old man was telling him was incomprehensible and repulsive to him.

  Haskins grabbed him by the elbow before he got two paces away. “You see why I couldn’t push Halsey to find out who killed Jeremy? I didn’t want him to know. I couldn’t let my only other son go to jail.”

  Gray responded without looking back over his shoulder at Haskins. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I shouldn’t go to jail because I was protecting Ashley Rivers from rape by your son?”

  Gray clenched his fists, on the verge of losing control, on the edge of assaulting the man who claimed to have donated sperm to his existence, a man he could never acknowledge as his father. He twisted to face Haskins. “I have felt guilty all these years because I didn’t do what was right and report it. I believed that you would make the rest of my life a living hell if I did. You know what? You’ve managed to make my life hell anyway.”

  “How? I didn’t push Halsey to pursue it. In fact, I told him to let it go.”

  “Because it was the right thing to do, or because I’m your son?” Gray poked a finger into his own chest while he yelled at Haskins.

  “You’re my son. Can’t you understand what I did for you?”

  “I did what I had to do to stop Jeremy from raping Ashley or murdering her in cold blood. Would that have meant anything to you if I weren’t your son?”

  He was beyond angry. His wrath spewed all over Haskins. “How many other women are raising your grandchildren because your son took after his old man and wouldn’t take no for an answer? How much did you let Jeremy get by with because he was just like you?”

  The new Baron of Hill County stepped back from Gray’s anger. For the first time, he saw raw fear in the face of the only man he’d ever believed was above fear. “What are you accusing me of?”

  “Let your actions accuse you, old man. I am not your son. You are not my father.”

  So many things started coming into focus for Gray. Haskins was his father. A fact of biology, but nothing more. It was the reason so many people often got Gray and Jeremy confused when Jeremy was still alive. It was the reason Gray had been able to establish an alibi by driving around in Jeremy’s car for three days before he drove it into Lake Jefferson.

  They looked a lot alike. Jeremy and Gray. They looked just like their father. Gray had the same dark hair and blue eyes as Fred Haskins. He saw the truth standing in front of him, a tired, dejected old man, pitiful to behold, as if Gray’s rejection of him had shattered his stone cold heart. The physical resemblance was so obvious. It was almost like looking into a mirror.

  He suddenly wanted to punish Fred Haskins for the miserable life he’d put Gray and his mother through.

  “Mitchell, I cared about your mother. I made sure she had whatever she needed to take care of you.”

  Sure, he did. He provided them with just enough they never went hungry but not enough his mother could escape Hill County and start a new life. She’d been stuck, eking out a living, obviously subsidizing her minimum wage jobs with Haskins’s hush money. Enough but never enough.

  “Am I supposed to believe you had my mother’s best interests at heart just because you paid her off to be quiet all these years? Am I supposed to believe you took care of her because you cared about her? Maybe because you loved her or something? Are you going to try to convince me that you loved her but you were stuck in a loveless marriage? I know better. You couldn’t keep your zipper up, could you?”

  He stepped closer to Haskins. “Did you know that Courtney Crenshaw is your daughter? When we analyzed her blood after she disappeared, I discovered we have the same father. Congratulations on the birth of a baby girl. How many others are there? How much of your blood runs through the veins of Hill County?”

  The old man blanched a paler shade of white.

  “You owe me.”

  “What do you want from me?” A hard glint had formed in Haskins’s eyes. He could only be pushed so far.

  “Stay away from me and I’ll stay away from you.” He turned his back on Haskins. Perhaps a foolish move, but he was ready to leave. He couldn’t stand to look at the old man any longer.

  Before he had made it to the gate that led out to the driveway, Haskins called to him. “Mitchell?”

  He kept walking.

  “Mitchell, you’re gonna want to hear what I have to say.”

  Gray halted in mid-stride, twisted on his heel and faced the man. Nothing he could say would make a difference. Gray wanted no part of the Haskins bloodline.

  Haskins’s face was impassive, unreadable. All the former dread and fear had evaporated. The new Baron of Hill County was back in control. “You care about the Downing woman, don’t you?”

  Fear rippled through him. He closed the gap between them. “Leave her alone.”

  “I’m going to prove to you my good intentions toward you.”

  He laughed, a bitter, dry chuckle. “How is that?”

  “You need to watch out for Lucy Kimbrough. She’s dangerous to you and your girlfriend.”

  His heart thudded in his chest, beat a few times, stalled, and regained a frenetic pace. What was Haskins connection to Lucy Kimbrough? How would he know Lucy was a danger to them?

  Halsey and Bennett both suspected Lucy had fought for control of the local meth distribution chain. Josh had told them Lucy had hinted that she’d had to fight Jared Crenshaw for the position. Nothing wasn’t adding up. Gray had thought Cooley ran the meth operation in northwest Arkansas, but it would only make sense that Haskins was the real power behind the distribution network. He ran everything else.

  “Why do I need to watch out for Lucy Kimbrough?”

  “You should discourage Ms. Downing from renovating that old house. She might find things on her place that could be deadly if she stirred them up.”

  “Is that a threat?” Gray was suddenly putting a lot together.

  “No. Just a warning.”

  Gray refused to back off. He wouldn’t let the man intimidate him, not any longer. “Lucy Kimbrough is dead. You’re going to have to pick someone else to run your operation for you.”

  It was a wild guess, but it apparently was spot on.

  Haskins smiled. “I always wanted my son to run things for me when I retired.”

  Gray allowed a smirk to crease his mouth. “So sorry to disappoint you.”

  He turned and headed for his car.

 
; “This isn’t over, son.”

  No, it wasn’t. He’d just drawn battle lines with his own father. He’d been thinking of resigning from the Sheriff’s Department. That wasn’t happening. With Haskins’s words still ringing in the back of his mind, he determined to remain on the job until he saw Haskins behind bars.

  A streak of lightning cracked the darkened sky. The storm had held off for as long as the clouds could hold it. The rain burst upon him just as he slammed his car door shut and cranked the engine. He couldn’t get away from Haskins quick enough.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  As soon as he climbed out of his car, Tori flew out of Ashley’s house and into Gray’s arms. His lips met hers, and he tasted her sweet kiss, savoring every delicious way their mouths fit together. In the pouring rain, he wrapped his arms around her, and they spun together in the weirdest sort of tangled happy dance. When he finally needed to catch his breath, he pulled his head away from hers.

  He smiled at her because he wanted to smile, because he needed something to smile about, and being in her arms was the best cure for everything horrible that had just happened to him.

  “You do love to kiss in the rain, don’t you?”

  She smoothed his dripping hair back from his forehead and stared into his eyes. He wanted to soak up her warmth, descend into the depths of her obvious affection for him. He needed her. Oh God, he needed her like he’d never needed anything or anyone in his life. He just hoped he could give her what she needed. He was damaged and it would take a lot of healing to get him back to whole.

  The door opened and Ashley emerged.

  “Why are you making out in the rain? That’s insane. Come into the house. Use one of my bedrooms. We’ll close our ears.”

  Tori grinned sheepishly and averted her gaze. A tinge of pink crept up her neck. He loved how she blushed. He loved that she did blush.

  He released his hold on her and grabbed her hand. “Let’s all go inside. We need to talk.”

  Tori’s fingers twined in his and didn’t let go, not even when they were inside and seated around Ashley’s kitchen table. Ashley had disappeared into the back for a few moments and then reappeared with warm blankets for them. While they settled in, she turned toward making a pot of coffee.