by Paula Graves
But sooner or later the deputies would leave, even Ellis, and she’d be alone again.
And a lot more vulnerable than she seemed willing to admit.
He didn’t doubt she was smart and tough. He didn’t doubt she could use that Walther she had locked in her closet as well as she claimed. But there was no good reason for her to go it alone tonight.
Not when he could stay with her and watch her back.
Unfortunately, she had made it clear that she intended to handle the threat on her own. Her dark eyes had warned him silently against even offering his help. She apparently saw the situation as a challenge, something she had to face on her own in order to maintain her self-respect.
So he hadn’t offered to stay.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to watch her back, whether she wanted him to or not.
After ascertaining that Cain could offer no information about the break-in, the deputies had stopped paying any attention to him, making it easy for him to slip out the front door unnoticed. He stepped into the chilly night air and tucked the collar of his jacket up higher to protect his neck from the brisk wind.
He’d been worried the deputies had blocked his truck in, but they’d left him a narrow lane of escape. Not that he intended to escape far.
He backed through the gap and down the narrow drive until he reached the road. It had been a few years since he’d wandered around this part of Sandler Ridge, but if his memory hadn’t failed him, there was a turnabout fifty yards up the road where he could park and watch for the deputies to leave. With the trees starting to lose their summer foliage, he’d probably even have a decent view of the cabin, a good enough view, at least, to see when the lights went out and he could safely move closer and settle in to keep vigil for the night.
His cell phone rang not long after he parked, the trill jarring in the stillness of the truck cab. He glanced at the display. Quinn, of course. Who else would be calling him at this time of night? “What’s up, boss?”
“I understand there was a break-in at Mrs. Lindsey’s cabin.”
How the hell did he know that? “There was.”
“Anything of value taken?”
“All her notes on the Renee Lindsey murder. Fortunately for her, she has backups.”
“Unfortunately for us all, now someone knows everything she knows about the case.”
“If it’s any consolation, that isn’t a whole lot.” Cain grimaced in the dark, thinking about how bloody little they did know that wasn’t already public knowledge, more or less. “By the way, I almost ran into Joyce Lindsey tonight. How long do you suppose it’s going to be before Joyce Lindsey figures out I’m the investigator you sent to work her daughter’s murder case?”
“Not long, I’m afraid. So you’d better find out as much as you can before that happens,” Quinn said reasonably. “Speaking of which, anything new going on?”
“We’re still trying to get Jim Allen’s DNA to test.”
“We are?”
“Sara Lindsey and I.” Cain looked toward the cabin, where the first of the three sheriff’s department cruisers was backing out of the driveway.
“She’s working with you now?”
“We have the same goal. And she has inside connections I couldn’t dream about.”
Quinn sighed softly on the other end of the line. “Are you sure you really have the same goal? It wasn’t long ago that we were wondering whether she could have been responsible for her husband’s death.”
“She wasn’t. She wants the truth as much as any of us.”
“Just remember, you’re my employee, not hers. Don’t let her agenda change yours.”
“Understood.” He ended the call.
Down the road, the other two cruisers left Sara’s driveway. Cain turned his gaze back to the cabin, wondering how long it would take Sara to wind down for the night.
Not that it mattered. He wasn’t going anywhere.
* * *
“I’M FINE, DAD. I nailed the door from the cellar shut, so I don’t have to worry about anybody else coming in that way. And I’ll get a dead bolt for the door tomorrow.” Tucking her cell phone under her chin, Sara finished picking up the last of the mess in the front room, tossing the ruined remains of the sofa cushions in the trash. As tired as she was, she hadn’t been able to bear the thought of waking up the next day to the mess that had greeted her when she walked through the door earlier that evening.
If nothing else, she supposed, the break-in was speeding up her timetable for making a decision about what to do with her grandfather’s cabin. If she was going to sell it, there wasn’t much point in worrying about a new sofa, was there?
“I still think you should come stay with your mother and me,” Carl said, worry darkening his voice.
“Dad, I lived alone in Birmingham for three years. Believe me, that’s a hell of a lot more dangerous than spending tonight in this cabin.” She wasn’t sure she was speaking the truth, but she knew with certainty that running home to her mommy and daddy was a step backward, not forward.
“Do you know what the intruders were looking for?” her father asked.
So Brad Ellis hadn’t let him in on that part of the investigation. She supposed she should be grateful her father’s former partner had bothered to hold anything back at all.
She kept her answer purposefully vague. “They just took some papers. Nothing really valuable.” Not in monetary terms, anyway.
“What kind of papers?”
So much for vagueness. “Notes and stuff.”
“On Renee Lindsey’s murder?”
“Yeah.”
Her father was silent for so long she started to wonder if the call had cut off. But as she opened her mouth to say her father’s name, he spoke in a low, tense voice. “I haven’t been given permission to tell anyone this, but I’m not going to keep it from you, since you have a vested interest in the case. Brad told me they got a rush job done on the DNA in the Ariel Burke case.”
Sara paced toward the front window, her heart in her throat. “The comparison to the DNA of the baby Renee was carrying?”
“Yes.” Her father’s voice deepened to a growl.
“And?”
“The fetuses definitely shared a father.”
Chapter Thirteen
Sara had suspected the DNA would show a match. She’d even expected it. But hearing her father say the words aloud hit her like a body blow. Groping for one of the kitchen chairs, she took the weight off her suddenly wobbly knees. “Can the DNA tell you anything about the father?”
“We just know that he’s Caucasian. I guess if the county could afford to do a more detailed analysis, we might be able to narrow down what part of the world his ancestors came from, but what we really need is a suspect. Without that, the DNA doesn’t do us much good.”
She started to turn away from the window, but a glint of reflected light outside caught her eye. Pushing the curtains open, she peered down the hill and saw a truck parked across the road from the cabin, mostly hidden by the shadows. Only the faint glint of moonlight on the chrome of the front bumper gave its position away.
Cain Dennison’s truck, she thought. Hadn’t he left hours ago?
“Why don’t I come by and give you a hand with the clean-up?”
“Dad, that’s not necessary—”
“Is it a crime to want to see your daughter? Just humor me.”
She couldn’t hold back a smile. “Fine. In the morning, though. I’m going to bed.” Eventually, she added silently, her gaze still fixed on the truck parked at the bottom of her driveway.
“Call me when you wake up in the morning,” he said firmly.
“Will do. Love you, Dad. Give my love to Mom, too.”
Ending the call, she peered through the window, trying to get a better look at Dennison’s truck. She ended up hunting down her grandfather’s ancient pair of binoculars to see if Dennison was still inside.
He was, she saw with a quick adjustment o
f the binocular lenses. He sat in the driver’s seat, his head tipped back against the headrest and his eyes closed. For a heart-stopping second, she began to wonder if he was still alive, but then he suddenly moved, his face screwing into a frown. After a moment, his expression relaxed.
He planned to stay out there all night, she realized. Playing sentinel for her.
Torn between gratitude and exasperation, she went to her bedroom to grab a jacket. If he was going to play bodyguard for her tonight, he could damned well do it inside a warm cabin.
* * *
“YOU KNOW THE story of Crybaby Falls, don’t you?” Renee’s voice floated to him across the wooden bridge. He’d moved ahead, walking off his anger, while she’d lingered to pick wildflowers that grew in a riot of color near the edge of the falls.
“You mean the Cherokee woman who threw herself off the bridge because her man was killed in battle?” He turned a scoffing look her way. “My grandmother says that’s bull. No self-respecting Cherokee woman would be that stupid.”
Renee made a face at him. “You don’t have a romantic bone in your body, do you?”
I could, he thought, taking in the simple beauty of her, standing at the other end of the bridge looking at him with her head cocked and her eyes thoughtful. I could be as romantic as you want. As romantic as you need.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
It took a second for the words to slice through the haze of his desire. And even when they registered in his foggy brain, he couldn’t believe he’d heard her correctly.
“You’re what?”
She walked slowly across the bridge, coming to a stop a couple of feet away from him. The expression on her face was somewhere between sad and hopeful as she pressed her hand against her still-flat belly. “I’m pregnant. And I’m going to keep the baby.”
Cold enveloped his body, starting in his limbs and rising upward to his chest, where his heart thudded a hard, slow rhythm of dismay. “Who?”
She shook her head. “I’m not telling anyone. It’s for the best.”
“But he owes you—”
“Maybe he does. But he’s not going to give me what I need. I’ve finally realized it.” She touched his hand where it lay on the railing of the bridge. “You’re so smart, Cain. Too smart to let romantic notions lead you astray. It’s why you’ll never have a broken heart.”
His heart felt shattered at the moment, but he supposed she was right about one thing. He’d never put his hopes in having her. Desires, yes. Dreams, perhaps. But never hope.
“What did he say when you told him?” he asked.
“I didn’t. You’re the only person I’ve told.”
“Then how do you know what he’ll do about it?”
“He doesn’t have room in his life for my baby. Not anymore. I won’t make him choose.” Renee’s lips curved in a faint smile. “It would be needlessly cruel to ask him to pick which one he wants.”
A sharp knocking noise jerked Cain out of his doze. Bright light angled through the window of his truck cab, piercing his eyes and making him squint to see the dark-haired woman standing outside his window.
Renee, he thought, and then checked himself when he saw Sara Lindsey’s brown eyes staring back at him through the window.
“You planning to stay here all night?” she asked through the glass.
He sat up straighter and started to roll down the window. But she was already coming around to the other side of the truck. Leaning across, he unlocked the passenger door to let her in.
She pulled herself into the seat beside him, one dark eyebrow cocked. “You were going to stay out here all night?”
“You said you didn’t need anyone to watch your back.” He rubbed his jaw, feeling the beginnings of a beard. “You didn’t say anything about someone sticking around to watch your house.”
Her lips twitched at the corners. “Sorry I startled you. When I knocked on the window, I mean.”
“It’s okay. I was having a dream....” He frowned, straining to remember snippets from the dream. It seemed important somehow. “A memory, really. Something from the last time I saw Renee before her death. We’d met at Crybaby Falls. We met there a lot—it was just about her favorite place on earth.”
“Oh, right. The whole romantic suicidal Cherokee-princess thing.”
“Yes.” He rubbed the lingering sleep out of his eyes, his mind wandering back to that gloomy day at the top of Crybaby Falls. “That was the day she told me she was pregnant.”
Sara turned to look at him. “Why didn’t you ever tell anyone about her pregnancy?”
“She asked me not to. Not until she could tell her parents. I guess she never got the chance.” He stifled a yawn. “But I think I just remembered something important. Something she said about the baby’s father.”
“Something you didn’t remember before?”
“It’s not so much that I didn’t remember before. I just didn’t give it the same importance as I do now. And you have to remember, back then I was trying to keep my own backside out of jail.”
“So you weren’t exactly volunteering information?”
“No.”
“But the pregnancy was a motive for murder. If the father knew—”
“He didn’t know. She didn’t tell him.”
“She didn’t tell him?” Sara sounded surprised.
“I know we’ve been assuming the pregnancy was the motive for Renee’s murder—”
“Ariel’s, too,” Sara interjected.
He looked at her. “We don’t know those pregnancies are even connected.”
“We do now.” She told him about the call from her father. “The DNA was a sibling match to Renee’s fetus.”
As the full implications sank in, a shiver run through him, not unlike the chill he’d experienced that day eighteen years ago on Crybaby Bridge. “My God. I mean, we suspected it was possible, maybe even probable—”
“I had the same reaction,” she confessed, tucking her thick sweater more tightly around her. The night had grown frigidly cold, Cain realized. They should be inside her warm cabin, not sitting out here in his truck.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m about to turn into a block of ice. Think you could handle someone watching your back from inside your nice, warm cabin?”
At her nod, he started the truck’s engine and drove up the gravel drive, parking behind her truck. He followed her up the porch steps and waited for her to unlock the door.
Inside, the cabin was warm and much cleaner than he’d left it, he saw.
“Sorry, the sofa is a loss, but grab a chair. Are you hungry?” Sara shrugged off her sweater, revealing a figure-hugging long-sleeved T-shirt that skimmed the top of her jeans, giving Cain a peek at her bare belly and the curve of her hips as she reached into the cabinet for a skillet. “I’m not much of a cook, but even I can handle a midnight omelet.”
“I could eat an omelet.” He pulled up a chair and sat at the kitchen table, where he could watch her work. “How long did it take to clean up the mess?”
“A couple of hours.” She put the pan on the eye to heat and retrieved a carton of eggs from the refrigerator. “Two or three?”
“Two is great.” As he watched her expertly crack the eggs, he realized she might be underselling her culinary skills.
“How sure are you that Renee didn’t tell the baby’s father about her pregnancy?” she asked.
“Pretty sure. She died the next day.” He remembered something else from that day, something he’d forgotten until the dream brought it back. “And she said something really strange that day. She said she wasn’t going to ask him to choose.”
“Choose what?” Sara looked at him over her shoulder. “Between her and some other girl?”
“I guess I always assumed that’s what she meant. But what she actually said was that there was no point in asking him to pick which one he wanted.”
She turned to face him, her eyes narrowing. “Which one?”
H
e nodded. “That’s what she said. Which one.”
“What do you think she meant?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I guess maybe, thinking of what she said and how she said it—what if she wasn’t the only girl her mystery man got pregnant?”
“Were there any other pregnancies at Purgatory High around that same time?”
He shook his head. “Not that I remember. But maybe it wasn’t anyone at Purgatory High.”
Sara frowned suddenly. “Jim Allen has a seventeen-year-old son.”
“You’re right,” he said, suddenly feeling queasy.
“Which means Becky Allen and Renee would have been pregnant around the same time.” She turned to look at him. “And maybe Renee found out about Becky’s pregnancy.”
“It would have changed the whole equation.”
“If she thought he was in an unhappy marriage, maybe she was foolishly romantic enough to think she could win him away from Becky,” Sara said in a hushed tone. “But married with a kid on the way?”
“She must have realized then that he’d already made his choice,” Cain finished for her, so many of Renee’s cryptic remarks finally starting to make an awful sort of sense.
Sara turned slowly back to the stove and continued preparing their omelets in silence. Cain could tell from the stiffness of her spine that what they’d just discussed had disturbed her deeply.
“I didn’t want to believe it was Jim Allen,” she said after a moment. “I figured after my session with your grandmother, when I didn’t remember anything else, that I was maybe conflating days in my head. Maybe I was remembering a visit that didn’t happen the night of the accident.”
“But you were gung ho to confront him. You wanted to get his DNA.”
“I think I wanted to exonerate him,” she admitted, removing the skillet from the stove eye and cutting off the flame. She turned around to look at him, her expression grim. “I still want to believe there’s another answer. Donnie thought so highly of the coach.”
“There are other seventeen-year-old kids in Ridge County. I guess it could have been some other guy with a kid on the way. Or even someone who already had a child. Renee wouldn’t have wanted to drag a man away from his family, especially if there was another kid involved.”