by JoAnn Ross
“What do you mean? If it wasn’t her, then who else…” Faith could feel the blood drain from her face. “You can’t be suggesting that whoever killed Erin might have actually been after me?”
“It’s just a hypothesis. But you are the closest house to the lake. You do own a jacket identical to the murder victim’s. If someone had come out here to harm you, he could’ve confused her for you. Is there anyone you can think of who might want to harm you?”
“No,” she said quickly. Too quickly, she realized when those familiar deep lines creased his brow again.
“You sure about that?”
“Absolutely positive.”
“No stalker types or deep breathers who get off on you talking dirty on the radio?”
That hit too close to home.
Tell him, both her conscience and her common sense advised.
Assuring herself that Sal wasn’t a danger to anyone but her, and not wanting to share her private life with a man who’d already proven himself untrustworthy, Faith decided to bluff and arched a brow.
“You must have me confused with someone else, Sheriff. I’d never talk dirty on the air. Even if it wasn’t a personal choice, the FCC doesn’t allow it.”
“Maybe you don’t say the actual words. But your smoky voice drifting out of the radio in the dark, inviting listeners to spend the night with you, undoubtedly has a lot of men around here conjuring up some pretty down and dirty thoughts.”
Of all the things he might have said to her, Faith certainly hadn’t expected that! Could he actually have been sitting alone in the dark (in bed?) listening to Talking After Midnight and thinking dirty thoughts?
An image of Will sitting up in bed after making love flashed through her mind. They were both naked, and he was feeding her an impossibly sweet, ripe Georgia peach, and afterward, he’d licked the juice off her breasts, which had led to…
No, dammit! Faith ruthlessly cut off the low, unbidden, and definitely unwanted sexual awareness the memory instilled.
“Well, if you’re here hoping to turn those dirty thoughts into a reality, you’re flat out of luck, Sheriff. Because it so isn’t going to happen.”
He tilted his head back and looked up at the ceiling, as if seeking strength from some higher power. Or perhaps he was just checking out the water stain from when some previous tenant had apparently allowed the tub in the second-floor bathtub to overflow.
“You’re not going to make this easy on me, are you?”
It was her turn to fold her arms. “Why should I?”
“How about because I care about you.”
“And I should believe that why?”
His muttered curse was cruder than any she’d ever heard, even during those teenage years she’d been living on the streets. And far worse than she’d ever heard from him.
Then again, when she’d made the huge mistake of falling in love with this man, he’d been William Prescott Wyatt, a man who could outsuave Pierce Brosnan or even Cary Grant.
“Look.” His dark hand, which had once been intimately familiar with every erogenous spot on her body—including several she hadn’t even realized she’d possessed—swiped through his hair again. While it wasn’t a typical cop buzz cut, it was still shorter than it had been back when it had felt like black silk against her heated flesh. “Why don’t you make some coffee? If we’re both going to be living here in Hazard, we have to settle this once and for all.”
He had a point. But she wasn’t feeling the least bit reasonable.
“I’m not a short-order cook. If you want coffee, either go home and make it yourself or see if you can sweet-talk Hannah Long into opening up The Branding Iron cafe and making you some. And it only needs settling if one of us has a problem. I certainly don’t. And if you do, I suggest you get over it.”
His black brows came together in a rough, almost menacing way. Almost because she’d been intimidated by much more dangerous individuals. “You didn’t used to be this hard.”
The irony was that she’d been far tougher than he could ever imagine and had, for the first time in her life, allowed herself to be soft with him. “Maybe you weren’t the only one pretending to be someone you weren’t,” she said with blatantly mock sweetness.
Instead of coming back with some smart-ass answer, he merely shook his head. His shoulders slumped as if he had the weight of the world crushing down on them.
Maybe not the world. But he was definitely carrying the entire town on those wide, manly shoulders. Although she hadn’t wanted to so much as acknowledge his existence, it had not escaped her notice that smalltown lawmen were expected to handle everything from barking dogs to barroom disputes to citizens angry about parking violations to the more serious issues such as domestic abuse and drunk drivers.
Yet here he was, trying to find a cold-blooded murderer, and she was stuck in a feminine-pique mode.
“I’m sorry.” She meant it. “You have a great deal more to be concerned about than something that happened so long ago. I’d honestly forgotten all about it.”
“Now who’s the liar?”
There was both humor and what appeared to be sadness in his heavily lidded eyes, making her wonder if just possibly he regretted what had happened as much as she did. Well, probably not as much. But at least somewhat.
It would certainly be more than she’d been giving him credit for these past three years. Not that she ever thought about him all that much.
Okay. So they were both liars. And wasn’t she even worse, for lying to herself?
“I made some coffee to warm up when I got home,” she said. The truth was she’d made it to keep awake on the drive out of town. “Since you won’t go away, you may as well have a cup.”
20
Will hung his heavy jacket on the hook next to hers, then followed her, weaving the narrow path between the boxes, to the kitchen and sat down at the table while she poured the hazelnut-flavored coffee into two thick earthenware mugs.
“Thanks,” he said as she placed one of the mugs in front of him.
She had no idea if he was thanking her for the coffee, or for agreeing to talk with him about their rocky past. Which wasn’t going to happen if she could help it. “You’re welcome.”
“There’s something I don’t understand,” he said with a dogged cop’s persistence. “If you’d forgotten all about me, why did you move to my hometown?”
She remained standing, keeping the kitchen island between them. “I don’t suppose you’d believe I threw a dart at a map and it just coincidentally hit this spot in Wyoming?”
“Of all the towns on all the maps in all the world, you just happen to settle down in mine?” He took a drink, then shook his head. “Sorry, sweetheart, I don’t think so.”
“Don’t call me sweetheart.” He’d lost that right on a steamy night three years ago when the joint FBI and Savannah police force had come bursting into her town house with guns drawn. “And how was I suppose to know this actually was your hometown? Given everything else you lied about?”
“Okay, I’ll give you that point. But it’s interesting you chose my middle name as your last name.”
“Prescott wasn’t your real middle name. Your name, which I belatedly discovered when I was subpoenaed to testify against my employer, just happens to be William James Bridger.”
“Well, that makes one of us who knows who the other person really is. You were,” he reminded her needlessly, “Faith Summers when you were in Savannah.”
“Radio personalities often use on-air names.” That was the truth. “Sometimes a station will even require it.” Another true statement. She was on a roll here.
“So that’s the reason for the phony name in Savannah?”
“Yes.” Okay, that was a huge hedge. Faith Summers hadn’t had a police record.
“Still, it seems to me I wasn’t the only one holding back information,” he argued. “At least in my case, I had a good reason. I was trying to bring down a guy trafficking in women being
brought into the port of Savannah, then sold to prostitution rings up and down the Eastern seaboard.”
“And you actually thought I was involved in that sex slavery ring?”
“Never.” He said it firmly enough that she believed him. “Not even in the beginning. But you’d left broadcasting to work as a press spokesperson on a congressional campaign for the guy who happened to be the one clearing the way for those women’s work permits to be approved.
“The Feds had two dead Ukrainian girls who’d floated up onto the coast. All the evidence pointed to them having been killed, then thrown off a ship coming into the port of Savannah. We were talking life or death, dammit, and when the trail led to your boss, I was willing to do whatever the hell it took to link the bastard to that ship.”
“Whatever it took, including sleeping with me for information.” That idea still grated. No, not grated, hurt.
“Hell, no.” He was on his feet, towering over her. “Dammit, Faith, if you’d only let me explain—”
“That would’ve been difficult, since, as a witness, I was under court order not to speak with you.”
“You also left town right after your testimony.”
“It’s hard to report the news after becoming the lead story for weeks. The station management agreed that it’d be best if I didn’t return to work.”
“They weren’t the only station in the city.”
No way was she prepared to admit staying in the same city as the man who’d broken her heart would’ve been too painful. Not to mention humiliating.
“Although we both know I didn't give you any information, thanks to having slept with you, I’d lost my credibility.”
“Okay. I can buy that. And I’m damn sorry for costing you your job.” He took another drink. “Great coffee, by the way.”
“Thank you.” Faith did not trust that easygoing tone. Actually, she wasn’t sure she could trust anything about Will Bridger.
“I suppose you know that you can locate just about anyone on the internet these days.”
Her stomach pitched. “So I’ve heard.”
He locked his arms behind his head, causing the muscles of his upper arms to swell against the sleeves of his khaki uniform shirt. “I did some Googling a couple weeks ago and guess what?”
“What?” She could see it coming. Like a bullet straight at her.
“Faith Prescott didn’t exist until she hit Hazard and began working at KWIND,” he said.
Uncomfortably aware of the sharp intelligence lurking in those midnight dark eyes, it was all Faith could do not to squirm beneath his unwavering gaze.
Focus! she instructed herself firmly. “I’ve already explained that. Radio personalities—”
“Use different names in different markets,” he said. “I get that. What I don’t understand is why it’s the only name the station has for you. Your checks are written to Faith Prescott, which means your taxes are being with held under that same name. But the thing is, sweetheart, you don’t exist.”
She’d known, from the way he’d worked with the Feds to break up the sexual trafficking case, that Will Bridger was a clever, dogged, even, at times, driven cop. What she hadn’t expected was that he’d have any reason to turn all those investigative energies toward her.
Hell. She should just have left town when he first showed up.
Refusing to flinch under his gunslinger’s glint, she decided to play the offended-dignity card. “I’d think, what with all you have on your plate right now, Sheriff, that looking up the background of a small-town radio talk-show host would be rather low down on your priorities.” Still stalling while she tried to figure out how to handle this, she took a sip of her own coffee. “Unless for some inexplicable reason you’ve decided I’m a suspect in Erin Gallagher’s murder?”
“I don’t remembering telling you the girl was murdered.”
“Actually, you haven’t told me anything. Yet.”
“Like I said, I prefer knowing who I’m dealing with before I start giving away case information.”
He wasn’t going to budge. And she had the feeling that if she didn’t give him something in return, she wouldn’t get her exclusive. Which wasn’t an issue any longer, since she was leaving town as soon as she could get rid of him.
At least she’d been planning to leave.
But as she glanced around the cozy kitchen with its wooden countertops, bright blue cabinets, and hammered-tin ceiling, she remembered how, despite all the work needed on it, she’d fallen in love with this house from the moment she’d walked into the door.
And even if she hadn’t begun to put down roots, unlike when she’d escaped Nevada in the middle of the night, Faith decided that she was sick and tired of running. Of always looking back over her shoulder. Of never having any kind of real life.
It was time—past time—to take a stand.
“Is there a point to this line of questioning? Some reason you’ve decided to submit me to the third degree?” She tilted her head. Met his gaze straight on. “Am I a suspect? Can I expect you to bring out the blinding lights and rubber hoses next?”
“You don’t have to worry. The Supreme Court says we can’t use them anymore.”
“More’s the pity.”
“Yeah. That’s pretty much the way I see it.” Despite the gravity of the topic, he sounded almost amused. “And, for the record, of course you’re not a murder suspect.”
“So it was murder?”
“You figured that out for yourself back at the lake. Someone slit her throat.”
Faith gasped and unconsciously lifted her hand to her own throat.
He rubbed his jaw and studied her. “How well did you know the Gallagher girl?”
“I told you, we chatted every so often when she was at the station. Obviously, given that we never discussed her scars, we weren’t close enough for her to share secrets, but I do know she was determined to make a new start.”
“Eighteen’s a bit young to feel the need to start over.”
“Perhaps it’s a different situation when the first seventeen years of your life was totally run by others.”
And didn’t Faith know something about that? Susan Gallagher and the woman who’d given birth to Faith were so economically and socially apart they could have lived on different planets. But both had used their daughters for their own selfish gains.
“And not all of us have our futures all planned out when we’re still in our teens,” she said.
He pursed his lips. Seemed to consider that. “How about you?”
“How about me, what?”
“Were you a late bloomer?”
“Absolutely.” And wasn’t that the understatement of the year? “And I fail to see how my past is at all germane to your investigation.”
He jerked a shoulder. “You never know what’s germane. Any crime investigation is like a jigsaw puzzle. You put a piece in there, another one here, keep working it, and eventually you’re looking at the whole picture…”
“Did she ever mention any boyfriends?”
“No. Why?”
“Because Josh said she’d mentioned a guy. She didn’t go into details, but he got the impression he was a lot older.”
Faith shook her head. “She never said anything to me.”
“Okay. Maybe some of her friends will know. Before coming over here, I called the dean of the school, who went online and checked Erin Gallagher’s registration records. Turns out she listed false contact addresses and phone numbers for both her parents. I don’t suppose you know where I could reach them?”
“Her father’s remarried. He lives back East somewhere with his new family. Massachusetts, Pennsylvania.” Faith shook her head. “I can’t remember which. But I got the impression they weren’t close.”
“And her mother?”
“She’s dead.”
When he blinked, slowly, Faith realized that she’d managed to surprise him, which she suspected wasn’t easy to do.
“You sur
e about that?”
“I’m sure that’s what she told me.” Faith hesitated and gave his question a moment’s more thought. “I never saw a death certificate, but I didn’t have any reason not to believe her.”
“Girl hacking up her wrists suggests she was troubled.”
“We can agree on that.”
“So, given that she was unstable—”
“Troubled and unstable are not exactly the same things. Especially when you’re a teenager.”
Along with feeling like a liar and a sneak for not having been open with Will Bridger about her true identity, Faith felt guilty for not having broached the subject of those marks with the obviously troubled teen. She’d told herself that she’d wanted to give Erin time to trust her. In retrospect, Faith admitted she’d also wanted to make sure she could trust the teenager.
“The article in Sports Illustrated didn’t mention any recent death.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t recent.”
“There was a photo of them together at the U.S. Nationals last year. Susan Gallagher couldn’t have been that old; she looked more like an older sister than a mother, so it’d have to be an unnatural cause of death.” He thought about that for a moment as he took another drink. “Given that the girl was a media darling, it seems her mother dying of cancer or a fatal accident would’ve made the news.”
It sounded like a hypothetical question, but Faith answered it anyway. “I’d think so, yes.”
“I’ll check with the offices of the Olympic committee as soon as they open. See if they have more information.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“Thanks,” he said drily.
Faith felt a tinge of heat flood into her cheeks. “Sorry. That sounded…”
“Patronizing?” He folded those muscled arms across his chest.
“Well, a bit,” she admitted. “But I certainly didn’t mean to imply you weren’t up to the task.”
“Not all small-town cops are Barney Fife clones.”
“I realize that. Having witnessed your work, up close and personal.” Too personal.
He had the grace to wince. “We’re going to have to work this stuff in our past out.”