A tall, wide-shouldered man wearing a white Stetson emerged. Beneath the hat, Seth could see their visitor’s salt-and-pepper hair. Since the man kept his back to them for several moments, Seth had no idea who this was. Nor could he tell if the guy was armed.
The man finally turned, his gaze zooming right to the window where Cooper, Shelby and Seth were waiting. The corner of the man’s mouth lifted into a half smile, and he started toward the front door. Not quickly. He was walking with a pronounced limp.
“Oh, mercy,” Shelby said at the same moment that Cooper muttered, “What the hell?”
Shelby caught onto Seth’s arm and dropped her weight against him. Clearly, something had spooked both Cooper and her, and once the man opened the door and Seth got a better look, he understood why.
He was looking at the face of a dead man. Or at least a man who was supposed to be dead.
Whitt Braddock.
* * *
SHELBY FELT AS IF someone had punched her. All the air vanished from her lungs, and she heard herself make a strangled sound of shock.
Obviously, her mind and eyes were playing tricks on her.
Yes, that had to be it.
But any proof of that mirage or illusion vanished when the man walked inside the sheriff’s office. She frantically studied his face, combing over every detail. It’d been twenty-three years since she’d last seen him, but there was no doubt about it.
This was her father.
Oh, God.
“Shelby,” her father said, his attention going straight to her.
She looked at Seth and Cooper to see if they had any explanation for this, but along with keeping their guns drawn, they were volleying glances at her, apparently to see if she had any answers.
She didn’t.
“How?” was all that Shelby managed to say, even though a dozen questions went through her head. But one question was by far the front-runner.
How was her father alive?
He came toward her as if to pull her into his arms. And she wanted that. Mercy, did she. As a kid, she’d fantasized that her father was still alive. She’d made up stories of his homecoming, but this real-life meeting didn’t exactly live up to the fantasy.
Seth blocked him from coming closer to her. “Why the hell aren’t you dead?” he snapped.
Whitt didn’t acknowledge Seth. He kept his attention pinned to Shelby. “We need to talk. Alone.”
“That’s not gonna happen,” Seth insisted.
“But you are going to talk to me,” Cooper added. “Start explaining now.”
Her father released a weary-sounding breath. “For a long time, I had amnesia.”
Shelby wanted to latch on to that explanation. Because it meant he hadn’t intentionally left her and the rest of his family. But there were the troubling words.
“For a long time?” she questioned.
Her father nodded. “I was injured. Lost a lot of blood, and I guess that caused my amnesia.”
“That blood loss is what put Jewell behind bars,” Seth said, his voice low and dangerous. Shelby hoped he wouldn’t launch himself at her father. Cooper, too. But both Seth and Cooper were clearly fighting to rein in their rage.
“Start from the beginning,” Shelby insisted.
Her father huffed. “Don’t I at least get a hug from my baby daughter first?” He extended his arms, waiting.
Shelby let him wait. “Tell us what happened.”
Even though there were more wrinkles on his face, more gray hair, too, his expression hadn’t changed. He pulled his mouth into a flat line before he gave a conceding nod.
“Twenty-three years ago I met Jewell at the cabin.” He pulled off his Stetson and sank down into a chair. “After we, well, finished, we had an argument, and she stormed out. Jewell was always high-strung so I figured she’d be back after she settled down a bit. I just stayed in bed, waiting for her, and I fell asleep. When I woke up, someone shot me.”
“Jewell?” Cooper immediately asked.
But her father shook his head. “I’m not sure who it was. Maybe Jewell, maybe someone else. The curtains were pulled, and the room was dark. I only saw a shadowy figure before the bullet went into my chest. I lost consciousness, and when I came to, the person was gone, and I had both a gunshot and some stab wounds.”
Shelby had no choice but to sit down, as well. “Why didn’t you call someone? Why didn’t you call Mom?”
“No phone. My attacker must have taken it. I managed to get up and get outside, but my truck was gone, too. I knew I was bleeding to death so I staggered to the creek, figuring the cold water would slow the bleeding. I fell in, and I must have floated or something because when I came to, I was on the creek bank. An elderly woman found me and took care of me.”
The images and thoughts were like wildfire in her head, and Seth must have realized she was about to lose it because he slipped his hand onto her shoulder. Her father didn’t miss the gesture because his eyes widened, then narrowed, but Shelby was too shaken to deal with his reaction to Seth and her.
“An elderly woman?” Cooper barked. He didn’t sound shaken. Just furious.
“I don’t know who she was,” her father insisted. “I faded in and out of consciousness for weeks. The woman didn’t have a phone, not even electricity. She was in some hunting shack in the woods, and I remember her saying she was going to try to walk into town and get some help for me. She never returned.”
“You have any idea who this woman is?” Seth asked Cooper.
Cooper holstered his gun. “No, and no woman came into town looking for medical help around that time. Plenty of people were searching for Whitt, and a woman claiming to have an injured man in her cabin would have alerted the hospital and the sheriff.”
But that didn’t mean the woman hadn’t been real. There were plenty of remote areas in the county. Plenty of hunting cabins, too. Of course, that didn’t mean any of this made sense.
“Keep talking,” Shelby told her father. “What happened next?”
“About a week after the woman left, I ran out of food. Still didn’t have a clue who I was or what’d happened to me, but I was stronger, so I took what little money she had lying around, left the cabin and started walking. When I made it to the road, I hitched a ride with a trucker who drove me to Laredo. I stayed in a homeless shelter until I was back on my feet.”
“But you did get back on your feet.” Shelby faced her father head-on. “How long did it take before you remembered who you were?”
He didn’t dodge her gaze. Not physically anyway. But his mouth went flat again. “About six months.”
Six months? Mercy, that felt like another punch to the gut.
“I was in a bad place,” her father hurried to add. “I knew I’d screwed up my life and wanted a fresh start. I’d stashed away some money in offshore accounts. Money that no one else knew about. And I tapped into those accounts so I could start a new ranch. A new life. Something I don’t expect you to understand.”
Everything inside her was twisting and turning, and it felt as if someone had their hands around her throat choking her.
“But you expect me to forgive you?” she asked.
“No,” he said. Then he repeated it several times. “I don’t expect you to understand that I stayed away because I didn’t want my attacker to come after me or my family again. I figured as long as I was near you, I’d put you in danger. But I’m back now.” Whitt’s attention shifted to Seth. “To stop this killer from hurting my baby daughter and to help Jewell get out of jail.”
Certainly, it’d already occurred to Seth that his mother couldn’t be guilty of murder. Not with the alleged murder victim right in front of them. But for Shelby it was just sinking in.
It didn’t sink in well.
“You son
of a bitch,” Seth snapped. “You let Jewell sit in jail all this time. For nearly nine months—”
“I didn’t know she’d been arrested,” Whitt interrupted. “My ranch is out in the sticks, way down by the border, and I don’t listen to the news. Don’t even have a TV. When I finally saw the story in a newspaper, I knew I had to come back to Sweetwater Springs. I decided to come to the sheriff’s office first. Glad I did, because otherwise I would have had to go looking for Shelby so I could talk to her face-to-face.”
The words were right, the explanation maybe even plausible. Maybe. But something still didn’t fit. “What about the bone fragment? It was found near the cabin, and DNA confirmed it was yours.”
“Yes,” he readily admitted.
Then Whitt lifted the leg of his jeans, and Shelby saw the metal prosthetic leg.
“I was in a bad car wreck about ten years ago, and my leg had to be amputated. I kept a piece of the bone as a stupid memento, but about six months ago, I realized it was missing.”
“Missing?” Seth said, skepticism dripping from his voice. “You’re sure you didn’t use it to set up my mother?”
Whitt stood and met Seth eye to eye. “I wouldn’t do something like that.”
Shelby wanted to believe him. Sweet heaven, she wanted it more than her next breath. But all of it seemed tied up in a too-neat package.
“Does Mom know you’re alive?” Shelby asked, standing, as well.
But he didn’t get a chance to answer.
“Whitt?” Shelby heard someone say. Annette. The woman came out of the interview room, her hand flying to her mouth, and she bolted toward Whitt, throwing herself into his arms. “You’re here.”
That immediately set off alarms in Shelby’s head. Annette hadn’t said “you’re alive” but rather “you’re here.”
“You knew he wasn’t dead.” Seth added some harsh profanity to that accusation against Annette.
The woman certainly didn’t deny it. She pressed a flurry of kisses to Whitt’s cheek and probably would have continued those kisses to his mouth if Whitt hadn’t gently moved her away.
Clearly disgusted with all this, Seth stepped to the side and put his gun back in his holster. “I need to make some calls.”
Calls to his sisters and Jewell, no doubt. Since the murder charges would be dropped, Jewell would be set free.
And that meant for the past twenty-three years Shelby had believed a horrible lie.
That Jewell had murdered her father and robbed her, her mother and siblings of the life they should have had.
All a lie.
A lie perpetrated by her father. Maybe he was even lying about the amnesia. At this point, Shelby had to assume anything coming out of his mouth was a lie.
“Shelby,” her father said, walking toward her again. “I know this is hard for you. You were always my little princess. But I’ve prayed that you’ll eventually find it in your heart to forgive me.”
“You actually pray?” she snapped. Yes, it was a petty dig, but right now there was zero chance of forgiveness. “My mother went crazy when you left. And you didn’t just leave her. You left Aiden, Laine and me. We grew up without a father. Though in hindsight, that might have been better than the alternative.”
That brought on another expression that she remembered. The anger flashed through her father’s eyes, but she saw him quickly cover it. Maybe because he realized she had a good reason to be enraged. Or maybe because he knew his anger was only going to make this worse.
Thankfully, Cooper took over with the necessary questions. “How long have you known Whitt was alive?” he asked Annette.
“Not long,” Annette said.
“A long time,” Whitt disagreed, earning him an outraged huff from Annette. “I called her shortly after I regained my memory. Swore her to secrecy, though, so that’s why she didn’t tell anyone.”
Cooper cursed, put his hands on his hips. “And it didn’t occur to you that Annette could have been the one who tried to kill you in the cabin all those years ago?”
“I wouldn’t try to kill him!” Annette howled. “I love Whitt. Always have, always will. It must have been Jewell. Think about it. She hasn’t said a word about being innocent, so you can bet she’s the one who attacked Whitt and left him for dead.”
Maybe Jewell had. But if so, it still wasn’t murder, and considering all the other lies, Shelby figured it was time for her to give Jewell the benefit of the doubt. Any other doubts she had, she’d aim right at her father.
“I can’t be sure if it was Jewell who attacked me,” Whitt explained. “Like I said, the cabin was dark. Could have been Roy, I suppose. He wasn’t exactly happy about his wife carrying on with me.”
No, and neither was Annette. Even now, after all these years, the mention of it caused her eyes to narrow.
“My father had an alibi,” Cooper insisted. “An eyewitness who saw him the day you were supposedly murdered.”
Whitt shrugged, clearly not convinced about the alibi, or maybe he just wanted to muddy Roy’s name a little.
“As much as Roy hated you,” Shelby said to her father, “I suspect you felt the same way about him. How can we be sure you aren’t just trying to set him up?”
That flare of temper went through her father’s eyes again. “I’ll forgive you for implying that I had any part in the violence that went on that day. You’re upset. I get that. But once you come to your senses you’ll remember that someone wanted me dead all those years ago. Someone who’s still killing.”
And that did perhaps lead them back to Whitt’s original attacker, but not necessarily back to Roy. Shelby remembered the kindness Roy had shown her by allowing her to come to the McKinnon ranch. No venom.
But she was seeing plenty of that venom in her father.
Just as she’d seen in Hance.
There was no way Hance could have been the one who’d tried to kill her father twenty-three years ago, but he certainly could be responsible for the recent murders and the attacks on Seth and her.
Of course, Shelby could say the same for Annette.
The woman was mostly lovey-dovey right now, but Shelby knew Annette had a mean streak. And an obsession with Whitt. Heaven knew what Annette would have done while carrying out that obsession.
“I need to call Aiden and Laine and tell them what’s going on,” Shelby said, turning away from her father. She had no choice. With her emotions boiling just beneath the surface, she might slap or curse him if she didn’t give herself some space.
Shelby went to Colt’s desk to make those calls, but the moment she stepped away, Cooper took some handcuffs from one of the other deputies’ desk.
“Whitt Braddock and Annette Prior,” Cooper said, “I’m placing you both under arrest.”
“Arrest?” Whitt snapped. “You don’t have any grounds to do that.”
“Sure I do. I can hold you for suspicion of obstruction of justice for not coming forward when Jewell was arrested. It’s the same for Annette.”
Whitt’s glare turned nasty. “That’ll never hold up.”
But her father was talking to himself because Cooper was already slapping the cuffs on him.
Chapter Ten
Seth had to force himself to stop pacing across the waiting room of the county jail. Hard to do, though, with his mind racing a mile a minute. When he’d woken up this morning he’d had no idea that this would become one of those life-changing days.
First, the attack on Shelby and him.
Whitt’s return from the dead.
Now his mother would finally be released from jail.
Too bad the paperwork for that release was moving a lot slower than Seth wanted, but Jewell’s sister, Kendall, and her lawyer were literally walking the paperwork through in the hope Jewell would be out in th
e next hour or so. That was why Roy, Rosalie, Rayanne, Rayanne’s husband and Seth all had come to the jail to wait.
Shelby had come, too.
It was probably the last place on earth she wanted to be considering they had nearly been killed here after their last visit, but she hadn’t wanted to stay at the sheriff’s office with her father.
And Seth couldn’t blame her.
Colt and Cooper were tied up with Whitt’s and Annette’s interrogations, but their other brother, Tucker, had called to say he’d be at the jail as soon as he wrapped up a case in San Antonio.
On the Braddock front, Shelby’s brother, Aiden, was on his way to confront his dad. Aiden was the county sheriff, and Whitt was at the Sweetwater Springs sheriff’s office—Cooper’s jurisdiction since Cooper was the town’s sheriff. Seth didn’t expect that to be a friendly meeting, since it was common knowledge that there was no love lost between Aiden and his father.
Right now, the same could be said for Shelby and Whitt.
She was leaning her back against the concrete wall, no doubt using it for support, and she kept nibbling on her bottom lip.
“You should sit down,” Seth suggested for the umpteenth time.
But she only shook her head and motioned toward Roy and his sisters, who were on the other side of the room. They were all seated at a round table normally used for visitors meeting with prisoners who’d been charged with lesser crimes and therefore required less security.
“You should be over there with them,” Shelby said. “This is a day of celebration for all of you.”
Seth stayed put. “I’m sorry. Not for my mother being set free. But I’m sorry your father did this to you and your family.”
She tried to wave him off, but her breath broke, and because she likely had no choice, Shelby sank down into one of the chairs. The tears came. Tears that she’d no doubt been fighting since her father had walked back into her life. But this time she couldn’t stop them. They streamed down her cheeks. She wiped them away only to have fresh ones return.
Seth gave a heavy sigh and dropped down next to Shelby, pulling her into his arms. The gesture earned him a grumble from Rayanne, but Seth ignored it.
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