“I’ll help.” Laney grabbed a yogurt from the fridge and searched through the drawers until she found a spoon. She could hear Taryn and Logan moving toward the kitchen, and she didn’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity when they arrived.
Not that she could avoid them in the little house, but she could at least be in a different room until she got her emotions under control. If she ever did. Which, when it came to Logan, seemed to be very difficult.
She carried the yogurt into the dining room and sat next to Seth. He’d spread dozens of pages across the dusty wood table. She reached for one.
“Not those. Look through these.” He handed her a stack of pages. “Anything that has Danver’s name on it goes in the pile on the right. Anything that mentions Banks goes in the middle. The left-hand pile is for anything that doesn’t mention either of them.”
“What about this pile?” She touched the one near the end of the table.
“That’s iffy. I thought it was interesting how many Cascade Mountain Men members Brinkman has as clients.”
“How many?”
“Taryn managed to access his computer system and download his files on to this.” He held up a thumb drive. “I printed out the files, and a quarter of the cases Brinkman has worked in the past year are related to the group.”
“How so?”
“He’s a defense attorney. He defended the Mountain Men against charges that ranged from illegal firearms possession to disturbing the peace. Nothing big, though. Still, Danvers is a member of the group, and he showed up at your house. There’s got to be a connection somewhere. We just have to find it.”
“We will.” Logan dropped into the chair beside Laney, stretching his long legs out under the table. He seemed completely at ease, the kiss they’d shared about as important to him as an ice cube at the North Pole.
“Did you make any arrests? Maybe give the group cause to want to oust you from the police department?” Seth thrust a sheaf of paper into Logan’s hand.
“None.”
“I think we’ve already established that Banks is the connection. He and Mildred had a score to settle and he used his partner’s clients to make it happen.” Taryn sat across from Seth and opened a laptop.
“Too bad speculation isn’t enough to convict a man,” Seth muttered.
“We have more than speculation.” Taryn frowned and dropped a page onto one of the piles.
“But not enough to bring before a jury.” Logan rubbed the back of his neck, and Laney clenched her fist, remembering the way his skin felt...rough and warm and wonderfully familiar.
“Brinkman is a lawyer with a good reputation for getting the job done. I’m on his website now. Lots of wonderful recommendations from enthusiastic clients. I wonder how happy he’d be to know what Banks has been up to. Maybe we should call him and ask,” Taryn responded, her head bent close to the computer screen.
“Let’s let the police handle that. Assuming that he wasn’t involved, I’m pretty sure that Brinkman will be happy to cooperate with an investigation. I’m going to use the desktop. I think I can replace the existing memory card with the one I took from Banks’s system.” Logan moved to a small computer desk shoved against the wall and dragged the hard drive from beneath it.
Everyone in the room seemed focused and busy. Except for Laney. She just sat with the papers Seth had given her still clutched in her hand.
She wanted to think it was because she wasn’t a police officer or a security specialist or anything else that would prepare her to look for clues and evidence, but really, it was because of Logan.
She glanced at the paper at the top of her pile, trying to read the words. They were black letters against a white background. No meaning at all to them.
“Find anything interesting?” Logan asked, and she met his eyes. She realized a moment too late that she shouldn’t have. Fire simmered in the depth of his gaze, and she felt it in the depth of her heart. Laney felt that little piece that she held on to so tightly slipping from her grasp.
“Laney?” He raised a dark eyebrow.
“I’m not sure what I’m looking for.” She knew her cheeks were red, could feel the heat drifting up her face.
“Let me see.” He held out a hand, and she gave him the pages, her fingers brushing his, all the longing she tried to keep hidden from the world and from herself pooling in her belly.
“I think I’ll go help Stan.” She walked from the room even though she wanted to run, and she didn’t look back to see if Logan was watching her retreat despite being tempted to do just that.
Move on. Start fresh. That had been her plan from the very beginning of her journey back to Green Bluff. Logan was part of the past. He couldn’t be part of the future.
Could he?
“What’s got your knickers in a wad, kid?” Stan looked up from the stew pot, his face wrinkled with age and experience. Laney had never known her grandparents, but when she was a kid, she’d imagined having extended family. Aunts and uncles and grandparents who’d give her a place to stay that was far away from her parents’ abuse. In her mind, her grandfather had been something like Stan. White-haired and easygoing. The kind of man who said what he meant and meant what he said.
“I don’t think I’m much of an asset when it comes to looking for evidence. I thought maybe I could help you with the stew.”
“It’s all in the pot, and I was just heading into the dining room. You come on in with me. I’ll help you figure things out.”
“It’s okay. I’ll just stay in here and...” She looked around. “Wash the dishes.” There was one—a coffee mug sitting in the sink.
“You avoiding something, doll?” Stan smoothed the white tufts of his hair. “Or, maybe, someone?”
“Just trying to stay out of the way.”
“Hmm.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just means that if you were my granddaughter, I’d tell you to stop being so afraid and follow your heart.”
“I’m not—”
“I’d better go help those dunderheads. Otherwise, they might miss something important.”
“We heard that, Pops,” Seth called out, and Stan smiled.
“I meant you to.” He walked into the dining room and left Laney standing at the sink, staring down at the lone cup. She washed it quickly, stirred the soup and listened to the mumbled conversation going on in the dining room.
If she were honest, she’d admit she wanted to go sit next to Logan and watch while he fiddled with the computer and found the information he was looking for. She’d admit that being with him felt better than being alone ever had.
And his kiss... It had shaken her. Made her long for something more than the life she’d been planning.
A dangerous thought. One that she might be sorry for when this was all over, and she went back to her life and Logan went back to his.
That was what was going to happen.
If everything worked out the way it should.
Logan free. Laney back in Seattle, back at her job, doing what she loved.
Alone.
She’d never thought about how heavy that word was, how hard it was to hold.
Someone walked into the kitchen behind her. She didn’t turn. Didn’t have to. She knew it was Logan. She felt him like rain on parched desert sand.
“Stan said that I need to stir the stew,” he said, his voice rumbling out and wrapping around her.
“I already did.”
“He also said that a pretty woman like you shouldn’t be all alone when there were five people in the house.”
“He could have sent Taryn in.” She finally turned, resting her hip against the counter.
“He could have, but he seems to think that we’re a couple.”
“I not
iced that.”
“We could be.”
“For this moment? While we’re stuck in a safe house with nowhere to go and no one else to lean on?”
“You know that’s not what I mean, Laney.” He stepped closer, and her whole body wanted to move toward him.
“What else is there? You’re a police officer in a town that I promised myself I’d never return to, and I have a life in Seattle.”
“I’m not a police officer there anymore.”
“But you want to return. You said so yourself.”
“And you said that you were thinking about keeping the house, remember?”
“That doesn’t mean that I’ll live in it. Just that I’ll hold on to it for the family.”
“What family, Laney? How can there be one if you’re not there?” His gaze drifted to her lips, and she shivered.
“I—”
He was right, and she knew it, but there was nothing she could say in response.
Family was all she’d ever wanted. All she’d cared about when she was young, but she couldn’t be a family by herself. No one could. Her eyes burned with the thought, her throat tight with a thousand memories and dozens of dead dreams.
“I guess you don’t have anything to say to that?” Logan stared into her eyes, and she thought that if she were a little braver, she’d tell him exactly what she wanted, needed, hoped for.
“The house is too big for one person.”
“So, fill it with people.”
“How? I don’t want to raise children alone, and after William died, I decided that I wouldn’t marry again.”
“I thought the same thing after Amanda passed away. I’d failed her, and I didn’t want to risk failing someone else I loved. I’ve realized something, though. Life without risk is lonely. Life without challenges is boring. When this is over, I don’t want to live the safe and comfortable life I created for myself. I want something more.”
With you.
He didn’t say it, but Laney heard the words. They echoed in her heart, and she wanted to hold on to them, believe in them.
“You’re braver than I am, Logan,” she said. “You always have been.”
“Not brave—just sure of what I want.”
“I—”
“Good news.” Stan walked into the room, and Laney backed away from Logan, her hip gouged by the counter, her heart tripping and jumping.
“What?” Logan’s gaze never left her face, and Laney thought that if she were just brave enough, she might be able to have everything she’d ever wanted.
“Chris had Danvers’s contact information in his email address book. I found two emails in his sent file. Nothing in the deleted files, but I guess he was smart enough to get rid of those.”
“What did he say in the emails?” Logan’s gaze shifted, and Laney eased out from between him and the counter.
“How about I tell you over some fish chowder? Grub’s on! You want to eat, you’d better come now,” Stan shouted in the direction of the dining room.
Seconds later, Seth and Taryn appeared, both looking triumphant.
Good news, and Laney was excited to hear it.
She just wasn’t sure how excited she was going to be when this was over and she went back to Seattle.
She would go back.
She had to.
Her life was there.
Everything she’d worked for was there.
When she looked at Logan, though, watched as he took a computer printout from Stan, she couldn’t help wondering if having the things she’d worked for was ever again going to be enough.
TWENTY
“Are you nuts? She’s a civilian.” Logan slapped his hand on the table with enough force to shake his nearly empty bowl of chowder. He didn’t care. No way was he going along with the plan Seth had just outlined.
“If we’re going to split hairs, so are you.” Seth ladled more chowder into his bowl. He seemed completely unaffected by Logan’s outburst.
He was going to be affected really soon if he didn’t stop suggesting that Laney be the one to visit Chris Banks.
“Getting tossed in jail didn’t undo all my years of training. I may not be wearing a badge, but I’m still a police officer.”
“Then why are you letting your heart rule your head?” Seth eyed him over his fresh bowl of chowder.
“The only thing I’m being ruled by is logic. It makes no sense for Laney to be sacrificed to the cause.”
“I’m not going to be sacrificed. I’m just going to ask Chris a few questions. Like Seth said, I’m the least threatening in the group, and Chris and I have already talked. He may be more open to me than to anyone else.” Laney swirled a spoon around in her uneaten stew, the bruise on her cheek fresh and vivid.
“That doesn’t mean he’s not going to shoot you the second you show up at his house.”
“I won’t show up there. I’ll ask him to meet me—”
“What you’re going to do—”
“You’re not about to get all macho on us, are you, Randal? Because that won’t be a good look for you.” Taryn washed her bowl and put it in the drainer, a glint of amusement in her eyes.
Logan wasn’t amused.
“What’s macho about wanting to protect an innocent bystander? Isn’t that part of all of our jobs?” He kept his voice steady and his tone light. He’d learned the power of self-control a long time ago, and he refused to allow circumstances to take that from him.
“None of us are going to have jobs if we can’t prove your innocence. You’ve got to remember, pal, that your future isn’t the only one on the line here. We were all at Mildred’s place, and it’s not like we tried to disguise ourselves.” Taryn dug through a cupboard and took out a package of chocolate chip cookies.
She had a point, and that irritated him.
He couldn’t risk Laney’s life, but he couldn’t allow two innocent people to lose everything for him either. Three if he counted Stan. Although he had a feeling the older guy was anxious to lose at least part of what he’d left behind.
“What are your thoughts, Stan?” He asked because the older man had been a police officer for thirty years and had a wealth of experience to pull from.
Stan looked up from the printed emails he was still studying and grinned. “I thought you’d never ask, kid.”
“You were going to give your thoughts to us anyway, Pops, whether we asked for them or not. So, how about you get to it?” Seth growled, but he grabbed Stan’s bowl and ladled more stew into it.
“Don’t mind if I do.” Stan smiled again, but Logan didn’t miss the hard edge in his eyes or the excitement in his voice. He might have retired a few years ago, but he was still a police officer through and through. “I’ve been thinking about this while the four of you argued, and it’s clear that we have a problem.”
Seth sighed loudly and snagged a cookie from the package.
“These emails link Chris and Danvers, but that doesn’t prove any crime, does it?” He glanced at each one of them as if they were schoolkids, and he wanted to make sure they got the point.
Logan did, and he was pretty certain everyone else at the table did, too. The emails seemed like everyday correspondences between an attorney and client. Except that Banks and Danvers weren’t attorney and client.
He snagged the sheets and read them again.
The first one confirmed a court date.
The second confirmed a meeting at a restaurant in Seattle.
“No crime, but I’d like to see what Danvers’s bank account looked like before and after these two dates.” If Logan hadn’t been in such hot water, he’d have phoned Tanner and asked him to look into it.
“I already passed the information on to Darius, and he’s contacted Officer Par
sons.” Taryn leaned back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling. “You were saying, Stan?”
“I was saying that the problem is lack of evidence. We can get it, though. Chris is too smart for his own good. He doesn’t believe that anyone can match wits with him and win. Those emails are a perfect example of it.” He waved toward the pages that Logan held. “If Laney puts on the right show, he’ll want to be part of it.”
“What do you mean?” Laney poured the remainder of her stew into the sink, her hair spilling down her back in a riot of curls that begged to be touched. Maybe Seth was right. Maybe Logan was allowing his heart to rule his head.
He frowned.
He didn’t allow emotion to rule. Not when it came to his job. “What’s your idea, Stan?”
“All Laney has to do is act like she wants to bring you down. A few compliments to stroke Chris’s ego, and he’ll be pulling her right into his plan.”
“You really think he’s going to be that easy?” Seth grabbed another cookie, but he looked interested. Logan was, too. Neither of them knew Banks as well as Stan did.
“Not easy, but I think she can convince him if she plays it right. Look at Mildred. She got that boy thinking you lied about everything, Logan. Made him believe that she was falsely accused, that you and Josiah formed an alliance the day you met and that you were in deep with his schemes. As a matter of fact, she was pretty vocal about all the wealth you’d amassed and hidden in an offshore account somewhere before you got the police involved.”
“That’s quite a story for someone to buy into.” Logan swallowed down bitterness. Half of the community he loved had bought into a story that was just as fantastic. No sense in holding on to it, but it still burned the back of his throat and settled like hot lava in his stomach.
“Exactly. When I heard it, I told her she was nuts. Weren’t you only fourteen when you arrived in Green Bluff?”
“Right.”
“A kid, and she was talking about you like you were a hardened criminal.”
“I did have a juvenile record.”
“Beside the point.” Stan waved his hand like he could wave the idea away. “All I had to do was a little research to find out that you’d been a good citizen for longer than you hadn’t been. Chris could have done the same. He didn’t. He wanted to believe Mildred. He did. End of story.”
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