Brycen moved his eyes back to the other man, not volunteering any information or defenses.
“I’m Kayla’s father. Has he told you about her? Avery is her sister. You’ve met her.”
“Yes.”
“Kayla was my girlfriend,” Brycen said, unwillingly, but at least he’d told her. “She died in a car accident.”
“Accident,” Mr. Jefferson sneered. “That was no accident. You knew what was going to happen and you took her with you anyway. You took her to spite all of us. And she was so smitten with you that she’d do anything you asked.”
“What happened?”
Reluctantly Brycen lifted his gaze to her, with naked regret. She felt bad for making him reveal something he’d rather not.
“A drug addict came after me when he was released on bail,” he said. “It’s true, I knew this, but I didn’t know he’d come after me while I drove in the car with Kayla. When the addict started shooting at us, I shot back. Unfortunately my attention wasn’t on my driving. At a turn in the road, I ran into a tree. Kayla died.”
He lowered his head and then looked up at Mr. Jefferson. “Her family has never forgiven me. Mr. Jefferson is right. I should have been more careful.”
He spoke matter-of-factly. She didn’t think he realized that. He was so consumed with remorse that he missed how readily he accepted responsibility. It couldn’t have been easy with Kayla’s family against him, full of animosity and blame.
Mr. Jefferson’s dislike didn’t waver; he only became more empowered. A man like him fed off weakness, which he perceived in Brycen. The oddity of that struck Drury. Brycen? Weak? Someone needed to let these people know who Brycen Cage really was.
“Your problem is you think too much of yourself, of your abilities,” Mr. Jefferson said. “You thought you could take her anywhere and keep her safe. Well, we all know that isn’t true, don’t we? You and that show have everyone fooled.” He turned to Drury. “You should have hired somebody else.”
“Brycen is the best for Noah’s case,” she said simply. “And frankly, for a retired army colonel, you have a terrible attitude.”
“Excuse me?”
Brycen looked at her with brief surprise before he covered it.
“Do you honestly believe Brycen meant to kill your daughter?” she asked the incorrigible man.
“Drury, don’t,” Brycen interjected. “It won’t make a difference.”
“He may as well have pointed a gun at her head and fired.” Mr. Jefferson’s retort supported Brycen’s conclusion. Nothing Brycen said would change his opinion. But Brycen wasn’t saying much. He certainly wasn’t defending himself, not as much as he could. Was he afraid of appearing too arrogant? No. He agreed with this man. He was at fault for Kayla’s death.
Mr. Jefferson believed taking Kayla with him when he knew a mad drug addict was after him had been a gross miscalculation, a deliberate risk to Kayla’s life. Careless and self-centered. Brycen had a reputation as a rock-star detective. Yes, he was good at what he did. Yes, he had a popular crime show on TV. But Brycen was not a conceited man. She saw him as someone who’d rather avoid all those women who fawned for autographs and a fanciful date, but who treated them with respect and kindness.
“That’s an awfully strong statement, Mr. Jefferson,” Drury said.
“He didn’t have to take her with him that day. But he did. And now Kayla is dead and he’s living the good life, without a care in the world for my daughter.”
He did have a negative view on marriage. But did that flow into his view on women to the point he didn’t care what happened to them? Drury disagreed.
“He has a lot of gall showing his face around here again,” Mr. Jefferson said. “You have no idea what kind of man he is.”
His other daughter, Avery, had warned her about Brycen’s dark side. Drury didn’t see a dark side in Brycen. She only saw a secretive side. His ex-girlfriend’s family not liking him because of her death didn’t seem like enough to warrant keeping a secret. There had to be more to his relationship with her. And his relationship with her family. What had happened? For Kayla’s family to harbor this much resentment—and for so long—there had to be a good reason. Not that Kayla dying wouldn’t be enough of a reason. Dying in a car accident wasn’t enough. Blame for taking Kayla with him when he shouldn’t have. Blame for his arrogance. Had they known his view on marriage? Kayla had likely told them, which might be enough to bolster resentment. Still, ten years was a long time. Why couldn’t Mr. Jefferson move on?
“Brycen is doing a valiant thing, coming here to help me solve my husband’s murder,” she said.
Jefferson smirked. “Valiant. Valiant only as long as it suits his needs. He refused to marry my Kayla. She loved him and he threw that love aside. She all but drowned in his selfishness. Until his recklessness killed her in the accident.” He turned to Brycen, who didn’t meet the man’s angry gaze. “Every day I wish she’d never have met him. She’d still be alive if she hadn’t.”
The last of what he said didn’t need to be so harsh, but Brycen did have a terrible outlook on marriage. Had Kayla experienced firsthand what it was like to fall in love with a man who would never fully commit to her? How sad.
But Mr. Jefferson was off base in judging Brycen. Brycen hadn’t intended to kill Kayla, and although he may never have married her or any woman for that matter, he didn’t deserve a life sentence of blame.
“Kayla told me about how hard you were on her,” Brycen finally said. “I didn’t bring it up back when I lived here, after the accident. But she resented you for trying to mold her into your perfect idea of her. All she wanted was your approval for the things she did accomplish. She didn’t want to go to college. She wanted to work for the Forest Service.”
Drury inwardly cheered that he fought back.
“She couldn’t make a living doing that. I tried to guide her to a better life, that’s all. She knew I loved her.” Mr. Jefferson’s beady eyes grew fierier with anger.
“She knew you would love her more if she went to college.”
Now Mr. Jefferson visibly flinched. His relationship with Kayla must have been strained, and Brycen dug where it hurt most.
“You’re still looking for someone else to blame for the things you regret in your relationship with her,” Brycen said. “If that has to be me, then go ahead. Blame me.”
Mr. Jefferson swallowed and Drury could feel his inner turmoil, the anguish over his regrets and his intense loss.
“I supported my daughter,” he finally said, sounding choked. “I only wanted the best for her.”
Brycen said nothing. The best hadn’t been him.
“If she hadn’t been with you, she’d still be alive,” Mr. Jefferson said again, pain drawing down his eyes.
Still, Brycen said nothing, only met the other man’s agony with stoic resolve.
Drury didn’t approve of Mr. Jefferson’s method of attack, but she sympathized with him. Maybe all he needed was a show of kindness. She reached out and took his hand, giving him a squeeze.
He turned to her in surprise, some of his suffering easing. With his defensiveness, few likely did offer a comforting hand.
“You be careful with this one.” He slipped free of her gentle grasp and turned to Brycen. “We managed to move on with our lives after you left. Do the right thing. Go away and don’t come back. Just...leave us in peace.”
She watched him leave. What would it take for the man to overcome his bitterness?
Maybe Brycen was a little selfish, but not when it came to Kayla’s death. He shunned marriage and kids and that might make him selfish. Had he led Kayla into a relationship he never intended to commit to? And then something else came to her. She could see why no marriage, but why no kids?
She watched Mr. Jefferson walk outside and cross the street, wiping his eyes. The father of a lost daughter still in mourning, a wound reopened with Brycen’s return to Anchorage. She understood that agony all too well. But Mr. Jefferson and his daughter Avery seem
ed extreme in their reaction.
Drury faced Brycen again, who looked at her during her thoughts. She met his eyes a while, resisting the pull of attraction.
“What happened the night of the accident?” she asked.
Brycen’s face never altered. He continued to meet her eyes. And when she thought he would refuse to answer, he finally said, “We were coming back from a trip to Colorado. We drove. It was a road trip. Late summer. Early fall. I introduced her to my parents and then we drove back. We stopped at all the touristy places. Yellowstone. Jackson Hole. We took a ferry to Victoria Island and then from there to Anchorage. It had been snowing awhile, a cold spell moved in. Driving was treacherous.”
He folded his hands on the table, his cup of coffee encircled by his arms. He lowered his head slightly, and then met her eyes again. “I wanted to drive her to my cabin. I had just bought it.” His eyes drifted, memory taking him back into time. “We didn’t make it. I noticed someone following us. He rammed into the back of me before I had a chance to lose him. When he couldn’t drive us off the road, he started firing. I swerved to avoid either of us being hit and crashed into a tree. I saw Kayla unconscious, but the shooter approached the car. The drug addict. I got out and shot him. Then I pulled Kayla from the wreckage.” He lowered his head again, this time lower than before. “But she was already gone.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose.
They had more in common than she’d realized. Except she still felt there was more he wasn’t saying. “And Kayla’s family has blamed you ever since.”
He nodded. “Her father tried to get the police to arrest me for murder. It was all very dramatic. He’s a prominent figure here, at least in his corner of the city. He used media and his connections to try and destroy me.”
But he hadn’t been able to, because Brycen had his own reputation. Drury remembered hearing about the scandal in the news. She hadn’t paid much attention back then. Around that time, she’d met Noah and they’d fallen in love. They married and then she had gotten pregnant with Junior.
“I didn’t fight him. I didn’t even have to defend myself. Clearly I didn’t murder Kayla. But he was overwrought with grief. Her mother and sister, too. I tried to understand why. That grew more difficult as time went on. After a year, I left.”
And the incident had haunted him ever since.
“You think her father is so emotional just because he blames you for her death and his rocky relationship with her?” She couldn’t get past the amount of time that had gone by.
“He blames himself. He hasn’t found a way to come to terms with that. Maybe he never will. I pity him.”
Which explained why Brycen apologized and didn’t argue back when Kayla’s family verbally attacked him. He felt sorry for them and, certainly, terrible for his involvement in causing so much pain. And most of all, his part in Kayla’s death.
“You left because of Kayla’s family?” she asked.
“No. Not completely. I left for me, mostly.”
“Because you loved her? Kayla?”
“I did love her. Alaska as a whole became the source of bad memories. I left to start fresh.”
He’d definitely started fresh, successfully so.
“Let’s go.” Brycen stood. “We’ll come back later. I don’t want to look too suspicious.”
Nothing deterred this man from his job. Even a run-in with his dead ex-girlfriend’s father. Or maybe he’d just gotten good at shutting out things that upset him.
“What are we going to do now?” she asked as they left the coffee shop.
“Send our own report to the deputy director who oversees Carter’s unit. Maybe he’ll order a search warrant of Carter’s house and finances. Then I’d like to go back to Melvin’s to look for anything we missed. There must be something.”
“You’re sure the deputy will get a warrant?”
“I can be persuasive.”
“You haven’t been persuasive with me.” She couldn’t resist the barb. Teasing though she might seem, she hadn’t missed how controlled he’d been with her. They had hot chemistry at times, but he kept his cool. She needed to know if he felt as much as her.
He put his hand on her lower back, guiding her toward the vehicle. “Why do you need persuasion?”
At the passenger door she stopped and faced him. What she’d learned about him softened her, touched a deep place in her. She acted now on impulse, on instinct...on what her heart led her to do.
She slipped her hand along the back of his neck. “I’ll show you.” Going up on her toes, she kissed him.
Chapter 9
Still rattled from the kiss Drury stole from him, Brycen gladly alighted from DAI’s helicopter. It had started to snow, falling lightly now, but the forecast said it would pick up by noon. The helicopter pilot had warned them they’d have to get back before then.
Drury kept smiling at him all the way here. This morning. In the helicopter. Her sparkling blue eyes held a knowing, intimate light. She haunted him. He wondered if he overreacted to a kiss. Ridiculous that he should feel threatened by Drury, her mouth, her softness. But she did do that to him. Her lifestyle and her beliefs didn’t match his. She had a son. And she lived in Alaska. He swore he’d never come back here, that he’d move forward and live a life of abundance away from bad memories and people who despised him. And yet here he was, back in Alaska, reminded of bad memories, facing people who despised him. He wished he could resolve the latter, but Kayla’s family would never let him. Part of Kayla’s death would stay with him always, but he had succeeded in moving forward—up until now.
He felt in danger of being drawn back to Alaska, through a beautiful woman who fit him more than he’d like to accept right now.
Her mouth touching his, her hands gliding up his chest and around his neck, breasts pressing to him, thighs against him, replayed for his pleasure as he walked toward the Cummingses’ home. She had tasted him in sultry urgency. He’d wanted to lift her and put her on the passenger seat and take her right there. He’d imagined it. He imagined it now, removing her pants and opening her just for him.
He didn’t think she’d been prepared for the Kelvin scale heat they generated. She’d taken hold of his jacket as though to remove it and looked up at him in a daze. Both of them had lost their breath. He met her passionate face and barely managed to heed their location—in public. He could take her to the back of the SUV...
He imagined what that would have been like. The windows were tinted. He could start the engine to keep it warm inside—not that they’d have needed heat. They could have gotten completely naked. He could only imagine what she looked like without clothes. Stunning. Soft. Wet for him...
“You going in or what?”
He snapped out of that hot dream and realized he’d come to a stop at the door. Drury had knocked and rung the bell. No one was home. He turned the doorknob. It was unlocked. No one locked their doors here. And Melvin must not fear anything if he still left it unlocked. He went inside. Much of the place was similar to the last time they’d been here. He did a quick search, finding Evette’s purse in the same place as before.
She hadn’t been home at all. Ignoring that bad sign, he left the bedroom and looked for anything they might have missed. In the spare bedroom, he found a door in the wall that led to a crawl space. He’d seen it last time, but this time he opened the door and found a light switch, a chain hanging from a bare bulb. He turned that on and went still. To the right, a hole had been dug and stairs constructed. Crouching, he made his way to the stairs, seeing a horizontal door laying open with a padlock looped through a metal latch. The door could be locked from above. Going down the stairs, he found himself standing in an underground bunker of sorts that had been roughly constructed.
Drury stood beside him, wiping her hands on her pants. The stairs didn’t have railings, only the dirt wall for support.
Not directly beneath the house, the bunker had been dug along the side. Shelves contained canned and d
ried food, several cases of water and other supplies someone might need in an emergency. A generator would power a refrigerator and stove, and three mattresses lining the far wall would provide a place to sleep.
“Melvin is a survivalist,” Drury said.
“So it would appear.” He looked for signs that Evette had been kept here and found none. Why hide a bunker? Or had Melvin hidden it? He couldn’t dig through the concrete foundation of the house, so maybe he’d dug it here.
Drury used her phone to take pictures, a precautionary step in case the bunker had importance they had yet to realize.
Brycen’s radio crackled before their pilot said, “Cage. Over.”
He pressed the push-to-talk button on the wire connected to the radio clipped to his belt. “Cage here. Over.”
“Weather is moving in fast. It’s heavier in Anchorage and moving this way. I’m going to have to head back in fifteen or I’ll be stuck here. Over.”
Brycen climbed the stairs after Drury and looked out the window. The snow had picked up since they’d come inside but still had yet to accumulate on the ground. He didn’t want to waste time and leave so soon. He needed to do a thorough search, and they couldn’t see the ground through snow.
“We’ll stay in town for the night. Come back for us when it clears.”
Drury stopped and turned to him in surprise. It would be a bit of a hike into town, unless he found a vehicle to steal.
“Roger that. Over and out.”
“Over and out.” Brycen lowered his hand and said to Drury, “Weather is getting bad in Anchorage. The pilot needs to head back.”
“Where are we going to stay? What about Junior?”
“Junior will be safe with your parents. I saw an inn the last time we were here.” Hopefully one night wouldn’t bother Junior too much.
“You mean the one where someone shot at us?”
“That would be the one.” Grinning at her sarcasm, he guided her toward the door and was glad she didn’t put up any fuss. Being raised by her adventurous parents had conditioned her to be flexible. He liked that.
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