Deeper Than Need: A Secrets & Shadows Novel

by Shiloh Walker

  Not a damn thing.

  * * *

  He stayed in the shadows as they worked the fire.

  He spoke with the cops when they came around and started with their questions.

  He kept his answers short and simple.

  He never lost track of the firefighter who’d approached Caleb.

  “So … did you actually see the boys start the fire?”

  He looked at the detective. A woman, pretty, young. She’d given him the name Jensen Bell, and for some reason that name had bounced around in his head, not quite connecting. He felt like he was supposed to know that name. It still wasn’t connecting, but he’d figure it out.

  He wasn’t worried about her, though.

  He wanted to finish up here so he could be done when the firefighters were.

  “No, ma’am,” he said, keeping his head tucked low and twisting his hat around in his hands. It was an act that worked pretty well with everybody who didn’t know him. It had even fooled Noah for a while … a good long while. With his eyes on the shiny toes of her very nice boots, he pretended like he wasn’t exactly comfortable staring her in the eyes as she continued to ask him questions.

  “So what did you see, Mr. Yoder?”

  She’d asked that question. A good five times over.

  He kept the impatience out of his voice as he responded in the same tone he’d used every other time. “Not much of anything, ma’am. I was across the street, but I wasn’t paying that much attention. Then I saw that man, Adam Brascum. He was looking for Mr. Benningfield. I thought I’d seen Mr. Benningfield near the house and that seemed to scare him. So he ran up to the house and I followed him.”

  “Why did you follow him?”

  Caine lifted his head and met her gaze levelly. “To see if he needed help. We heard glass break. He ran around the house. I heard him tell me not to go inside, but to find Noah.”

  * * *

  The man was completely full of shit.

  He was also a damn good actor.

  He played the meek and mild bit very well, Jensen had to say, but he was about as meek and mild as Hercules was, she decided.

  As he finished reciting his little part, he went back to staring at his boots.

  “I don’t know a lot of Amish who smoke,” she said.

  He lifted his head slowly; then he blinked. “Ma’am?”

  “You smoke. I can smell it.”

  “No, ma’am.” He shook his head and nodded to the house. “I was around that place all night and it’s done a lot of smoking.”

  Then he went back to twisting his hat and staring at the ground and playing aww, shucks, you make me nervous.

  He played it, and he played it a little too well.

  But she didn’t have time to figure out what his game was.

  She had a firebug to talk to, and her gut and her heart were already in a knot over it.

  * * *

  “It didn’t stop.” Caine didn’t bother looking over as the man joined him.

  He’d been waiting for him most of the night.

  A soft sigh drifted through the night. “Why are you here?”

  “You’ve asked me that before. I’m here because I can’t leave.” He bent down and swiped a rock from the ground, hurled it out over the river. From the corner of his eye he could see the firefighters still milling around. They’d finally managed to beat the fire down, but the only thing that remained of the house now was a husk, the shells of walls, skeletal remains of the roof.

  That was all that remained. It was still too much.

  “Did you hear me?” Caine shot the man a look.

  “I heard you,” he said mildly.

  “That one.” Caine jerked his chin to the firefighter hanging back on the edge of the crowd. The man happened to glance in their direction at that very second, and when their gazes locked the man at Caine’s side waved.

  The firefighter waved back.

  Caine wanted to rush him, take him to the ground and beat him bloody. “He’s one of them.”

  A soft sigh drifted through the night. “You sure about that?”

  “Yes.” One big hand closed into a fist. “I’m going to kill him. I’m going to find the others and I’m going to kill them.”

  “Be careful what you say … what you do.” The man turned his head and met Caine’s gaze in the soft light of the coming dawn. “You know there are certain lines that you can only cross once.”

  “Is that right?” Shifting his attention back to the firefighter, Caine narrowed his eyes as he pictured just the right way to do it. He’d like to make it slow. Painful. But the only real option was quick. “What’s his name?”

  “That’s Junior. Charles Sutter, Junior. Third or fourth cousin to old Pete Sutter.”

  A hand closed around Caine’s arm, held him when he would have taken the first step. He stopped, looked over at the man and waited.

  “He’s got a wife. A son.”

  “All the more reason,” Caine said quietly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “I’m not following.”

  Adam opened his mouth, but before he could say anything Noah cut him off. “It’s a forum,” he said tiredly, pulling his phone from his pocket and pulling up the site he kept bookmarked. “The two of us run it. We’re both moderators, although nobody knows Adam is one of the people in charge, so keep that quiet, if you would.”

  Trinity frowned as she looked at Noah’s face for a second and then shifted her attention to the display on his phone.

  The bluish glow of the screen reflected too harshly on her eyes and she couldn’t stare too long before she had to pass the phone back to him. “So this is … what? For troubled kids?”

  “A little more specific. It’s a place for the local kids who are drinking or who feel the need to. A safe place, hopefully, to keep them from ending up like we did,” Noah said.

  “We?” She glanced at Adam.

  He lifted a brow. “Problem, sugar?”

  “I’ve got a name.”

  He just shrugged.

  She looked back at Noah. “I understand the need to help, but are either of you qualified for this?”

  “I am.” Noah rubbed his hands over his face. “I’m a licensed counselor, although I tend to keep to things like this. I just…” He shrugged. “Most of my life, it seems like I’ve damaged everything I’ve touched. This was a way for kids to reach out when they needed help, a way they could talk to somebody without their parents forcing it on them. Kids need a safe outlet. We tried to give them that.”

  “Looks like it blew up in our faces,” Adam muttered. Then he swore and shot Trinity a sour look. “Sorry. Poor choice of words there.”

  Wanly she said, “Well. Something did blow up. But I’m still not getting … why.”

  Noah looked down, staring at the phone. Something pulsed in his cheek, throbbed. The strain on his face was awful. Reaching out, she touched his arm. Under her hand, his muscles were rigid and hard as stones. “Noah?”

  He shot her a strained smile.

  “I don’t think he meant to hurt anybody, Trinity. He’s just—”

  “Screwed up.” Adam shoved off the wall, wincing a little. His left arm was bandaged from the shoulder down, and along the left side of his face she could see a few small, livid burns. Not quite as pretty as he’d been the first time she’d seen him. His gaze collided with hers. “He didn’t know anybody was in the house—I know that much. That’s why they were in such a hurry to do this tonight, before you moved back in.”

  “Well, that’s interesting information.”

  As one, the three of them looked up.

  The woman in the doorway was slender and petite. Trinity thought the top of her head might just reach Trinity’s chin.

  But there was nothing delicate about her. She looked at each of them, her gaze finally landing on Adam. “Adam, I think we need to speak. Right about now works really well for me.”

  “That sounds just fine, sugar,” he drawled.
His voice dropped to a low rumble and the look in his eyes was one of pure sin.

  Jensen narrowed her eyes. “Knock it off, Casanova.” She glanced past him to Noah. “We’ll be having our chat next, Preach.”

  * * *

  “That’s it.” Jensen stared at Adam over the small cafeteria table, a look of disgust in her eyes. “That’s all you can tell me.”

  “That’s all I know, sugar.” He sipped at the piss that passed for coffee and slumped in the chair, spreading his legs out and caging hers in between his. She slid him a look from under her lashes and went back to making notes. “How are you all holding up? Chris is still pretty quiet these days.”

  “Chris is dealing in her own way.” Jensen shrugged, made a few more notes and then looked up at him. “It’s good to finally know.”

  “Yeah.” He focused on the wall past her. “I guess it would be.”

  The weight in his chest grew, and because Jensen would see it he pasted a wide, easy smile on his face before shifting his attention back to her. “I hear you hooked up with the lawyer. Kind of a shame. We should have given it another go first.”

  “We had a go, Adam,” Jensen said, her voice mild. “You, me, a set of handcuffs. It was a lot of fun and then it was done.”

  He blew out a sigh. “Those handcuffs were a lot of fun. You sure you’re serious about the lawyer? Hot-cop sex really has its benefits.”

  “Well. There are other cops … if you’re bisexual?” She gave him a wide, devious smile.

  He snorted. “Nah. But if it gets you going, you’re welcome to fantasize about it, Jensen. Anything to get you to let me try those cuffs out with you again.”

  “Adam, it’s not going to happen. We had fun.” She shrugged. “But like I said, it’s done. I’m kind of past the man-whore stage.”

  He clenched his jaw and looked away.

  As the silence, heavy as a shroud, lingered, Jensen sighed. “Hell. I’m sorry. That was mean and uncalled for.”

  He looked back at her, unflinching. “Mean, maybe. True, though.” Jerking a shoulder in a shrug, he reached for his coffee and forced himself to take another swallow. It tried to lodge in his throat, but he needed to do something. “You’ve always called them as you seen them, Jensen. No reason to stop now.”

  “Yeah, well, no reason to tell somebody her butt looks big, either. You want to sleep with every woman who’ll have you, that’s your business, none of mine. You’re a grown man, right?” She shrugged and flipped her notebook closed. “I just…”

  He lifted his brows. “What?”

  “Don’t you ever get tired of it, Adam? Using? Being used?”

  Because it cut deeper than he liked, he rocked forward and smiled, studying her close. “Why would I get tired of it? They get what they need. I get what I need.”

  “Do you?” Jensen eyed him. “And just what is it that you need?”

  To forget— The words burned inside him. Looking away, he tried to shrug it all off, push it aside. “You got any more questions you want to ask, Jensen? If not, I hurt like a bitch and I just want to go home.”

  When she stayed silent, he left the cafeteria.

  It was a mile to his place, but oh well.

  Maybe the walk would do him some good.

  * * *

  “CTaz is Caleb Sims.”

  Noah closed his eyes.

  Out in the hallway, lights dimmed, he listened as Jensen quietly recounted the information she’d managed to gather.

  “Why did he do it?”

  “I’m still trying to figure that part out.” She sighed and then glanced past Noah to the open door. Sometime in the past ten minutes Trinity had finally managed to fall asleep. Micah was curled up on a miserable excuse of a chair that folded out into a bed of sorts.

  Jensen rocked back on her heels and blew out a breath. “I want you to come with me when I talk to him.”

  “His parents ask for me?”

  She slid him a look.

  It was a look that made his gut ache.

  “I think you and I both know there are things that boy is going to tell us that we aren’t going to like, Preach.” Then she smiled, a pleased, devious little slant of her lips. “But the good news, Caleb’s daddy is out with his uncle on some sort of hunting trip. It’s just his mom for now.”

  “Mandy.”

  “Yep.” Jensen cocked her head. “So, you think you can charm her into giving me a minute?”

  “No.” He shook his head and went to tuck his hands into his pockets only to hiss as the bandage on his right hand rubbed against the deep abrasions. Sighing, he eyed the dressing there with acute dislike for a second and then he looked up at her. “She won’t let you talk to him alone. Mandy is too smart for that. But … she might let me talk to him.”

  * * *

  The boy looked too small in that bed, Noah thought. Too small and younger than he really was.

  Mandy fretted behind Noah and he smiled back at her. “You go on down with Jensen, Mandy. Just get a cup of coffee or something. Call Dirk and see when he’ll be home. I know you must need him with you something awful right now.” It was a manipulation of the highest order, Noah knew. He did it with no regret at all.

  Caleb lay in that bed, his eyes bright with fear and pain and misery, and in the back of his eyes, Noah saw the, echo of awful secrets.

  Once Mandy kissed his temple, Jensen pulled the door shut behind them and Noah settled on the chair at Caleb’s side.

  “I didn’t know you were inside, Preach,” Caleb said, his voice breaking.

  “Don’t worry about that right now,” Noah said, pushing that aside. He had to focus on other things and not the house, not his own fear.

  “I could have killed you. That woman. I … I…” His eyes wheeled around and he jerked his wrists against the cuffs used to keep him from leaving the bed.

  Noah stared at them and felt his heart splinter.

  “I think maybe it’s time you tell me what’s going on, son,” Noah said, shifting his gaze from those restraints up to Caleb’s face. “Don’t lie to me; don’t tell me it’s nothing. Because we both know that’s bull. There’s something going on and now it’s about ready to come out of the bag. I’ll help. I want to help, but you have to take the step forward and control what happens from here on out.”

  Caleb stared at him.

  Hot, ugly sobs started to rip out of him.

  * * *

  Junior didn’t live in town.

  That was the one upside to all of this. After the discovery a few hours ago, he’d decided on a course of action, and it was time to put it in motion. Really, there was only one.

  As he waited, out of sight, he checked the time. Checked the road. Not many people came this way, and that was a blessing.

  He didn’t have much time before he’d have to be back. If he was missed it would be hard to explain what he’d been doing, and if anybody else came along … well, it didn’t bear thinking about.

  How had this happened? He just didn’t know, but however this was connected to that awful mess before, it was his responsibility to clean it up, and that was what he would do.

  The truck came rumbling around the corner, Junior behind the wheel.

  Rising, he waved an arm, pasting a rueful look on his face as Junior started to slow down.

  A moment later, Junior had stopped and opened the door.

  “Well, good morning, sir … what are you doing—”

  Right there, with one foot on the ground, Junior froze. Confused, he looked down, staring at the red stain blooming wide in his belly.

  Stunned, he clapped his hands over it and started to sway forward. Before Junior could fall to the ground, he caught him and forced him up and back into the truck, behind the wheel. If he gauged it right, Junior should still have a few minutes left.

  He moved around to the other side and climbed in. As Junior swung his eyes over to him, he smiled. “Come on, Junior. We’re going for a drive.”

  “I … fuck. Hosp
ital. What…”

  Junior found the muzzle of a shotgun pressed to his mouth. “We’re going for a drive, son. If you please. Down to the boat dock.”

  Junior blinked, sweat beading around his mouth. “No, sir. Please don’t.…”

  “If you don’t drive right now, I’m going to blow your dick off. Am I understood?”

  Junior drove.

  * * *

  Four other names.

  As the truck slowly disappeared into the water, he studied the list.

  He had four other names.

  He didn’t know if there were others, but for now this would do.

  Weary, he folded the list in half and placed it in his pocket and then made his way back to his car, ever watchful for the appearance of anybody else. He’d have to be careful from here on out. Doing this in broad daylight had been such a risk.

  But a necessary one.

  He’d made a promise, all those years ago, over a pool of blood.

  He did believe in keeping promises.

  * * *

  Noah stood at the door, keeping his weight braced against it while Jensen and Dean West spoke with Caleb. Dean was fairly new in town, a lawyer who’d moved there from Lexington. He had a deep, soothing voice, a sharp mind, and once or twice, when Caleb had his head turned, Noah had caught a glimpse of raw fury in the man’s eyes.

  Caleb, after he’d stopped sobbing, had told Noah he had a backpack. There was a disc inside it, tucked inside a hidden area in the lining. A disc. A journal. Notes.

  Noah had found all of it and his stomach had revolted over what he saw. Jensen had the information now and how she managed to sit there, so calmly, so professionally, after she’d viewed it, he didn’t know.

  He understood the desire to die.

  He understood anger.

  He understood despair.

  He understood helplessness and hopelessness and some of the darkest emotions a man could experience.

  But until a short while ago, he’d never understood the urge to kill.

  Now he was flooded with it. Blood roared in his ears; his muscles were tight, ready—he felt like a loaded gun, ready to fire, and all he needed was a target. Bile churned in his gut and he wanted to empty himself of everything he had inside him. Maybe it would purge him. Cleanse him.