Nothing To Lose

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “Mmm. My favorite.”

  With a laugh, Kate rushed out the door. Taylor watched her go, aware of the jealousy settling like a hard, greasy lump in her stomach.

  She wanted to be the one running out the door to the hospital. Just went to show how crazy she was, she thought, that she could actually envy Kate the upcoming twelve hours on her feet dealing with surly patients and reams of paperwork.

  She fiercely wanted to go back and finish medical school, to serve the residency she’d been promised in pediatrics. She had told Wyatt the truth about that the other day at the diner. Though she knew it wasn’t fair, that it was petty and small, sometimes it chewed her up inside that Kate had the freedom to follow her dreams while Taylor was trapped in a world she hated, a world that threatened to suck the life out of her.

  Taylor sighed, ashamed of her moment of weakness. How could she feel sorry for herself and decry her own lack of freedom? If the mood struck her, she could walk outside right now and enjoy the cool bite of an October evening or the sweet scent of the late-blooming flowers in her garden.

  She could run to her favorite Italian restaurant for all the lasagna her heart desired, could top it off with a big bowl of triple chocolate Häagen-Dazs from the freezer if she wanted.

  Hunter could do none of those things. He truly had no freedom, no choices. Until he did, she could put her own dreams on hold.

  Wyatt wasn’t sure what to expect from Taylor’s house. From his research and from testimony during the trial, he knew she came from money—her great-grandfather Bradshaw had been a wealthy silver baron in Park City during its mining heyday. Through prudent investments, the Bradshaws had managed to hang on to their money at a time when many other mining magnates went broke.

  That had been one of the more intriguing aspects of her brother’s case that the media had played up relentlessly—Hunter had come from wealth and privilege. He hadn’t needed to work a day in his life if he didn’t want to, yet he had dirtied his hands by playing at being a cop. Rich boy turned cop turned killer.

  For all he knew, Taylor could live in some starchy Avenues mansion. But when he followed the directions she’d given him three days earlier, he found a neighborhood of small cottages. Though the houses were small and the yards minuscule, this was a desirable area, neatly sandwiched between the University of Utah campus and Salt Lake City’s downtown. The houses were old but charming, with residents who kept them freshly painted and tidy.

  With its cheerful blue shutters and fall flower garden, Taylor’s house reminded him a little of the cottage his brother Gage had rented in Park City earlier in the summer, where he had met his fiancée Allie and her two darling little girls.

  A group of children played basketball on a standard tacked to the garage of the house next door, and on the other side, a rail-thin gray-haired man paused his leaf-raking long enough to study Wyatt with curiosity, making him wonder if Taylor didn’t have many male callers.

  Before he turned off his engine in front of her house, he saw a small silver Honda back out and drive away, but from his angle he couldn’t get a glimpse of the driver.

  Maybe Taylor chickened out and decided not to meet with him. Wyatt rejected the thought as soon as it entered his mind. She struck him as the kind of woman who would never back down from a fight. Besides, he had seen her car the other afternoon at the prison and knew she drove a Subaru wagon.

  Anticipation flickered through him at knowing he would see her again. He was grimly aware that he had done entirely too much thinking about Taylor the past few days.

  Objectivity.

  He repeated the word in a low mantra as he hit the locks on his Tahoe and climbed out into the October evening. He might be fiercely attracted to Taylor, but he couldn’t allow that to distract him from his goal. He was going to write her brother’s story.

  No, he corrected himself. He was going to write Dru and Mickie Ferrin’s stories. Big difference, one he needed to remember. They were the reason he was here.

  Taylor Bradshaw was a source for his book, that’s all. As a loving, devoted sister, she could give him rare insight into her brother’s mind and heart, perceptions he might not even be able to get from Bradshaw himself. She could tell him what it had been like growing up as the two children of a man who by all accounts had been as strict with his children as he’d been on the bench.

  Maybe she could even shed some light into what might have made Hunter snap that night.

  He rang the doorbell and smiled at the curious neighbor, amused that the elderly man was still watching with his rake in his hands as if he was prepared to use it if Wyatt threatened Taylor in any way.

  The door opened a moment later and, before he could even say hello, he was accosted by a sleek Irish setter. The dog didn’t bark at him or jump up, but she blocked his way inside, sniffing and wagging her tail in greeting, until he reached down to pet her.

  She immediately took that as permission to get up close and personal. She rubbed her head against his thigh eagerly, that long auburn tail going like crazy.

  Taylor stepped forward, her color high—at the dog’s friendliness or at something else, he couldn’t begin to guess. “Belle, leave the poor man alone. Down,” she ordered. The dog whined a little but obeyed, slinking down to the tile floor.

  “Sorry about that. I’m afraid Belle is a cheap hussy for any man who gives her a little attention,” she said. “Most women she can take or leave, but whenever a man comes to the house, she is practically giddy. She misses Hunter, I think.”

  “She was his?”

  Taylor nodded. “He raised her from a puppy. Actually, he rescued her from a crime scene. Belle’s mother was shot trying to protect her owner from the woman’s abusive boyfriend. Neither the dog nor the woman survived. There were three others in the litter, and Hunter and John Randall, his partner, made it their mission in life to find homes for all of them. He fell hard for Belle and couldn’t give her up.”

  He tried—and failed—to imagine the tough man he met in prison rescuing a litter of orphaned puppies. With that hard, steely gaze of his, Wyatt had a difficult time imagining Hunter had a soft spot for much. Except maybe his sister.

  “I guess you inherited her after his arrest.”

  “I’m just watching her until Hunter gets out,” she said, her chin lifted defiantly as if daring him to contradict her.

  Wyatt wasn’t sure what to say to that, and they stood awkwardly in her small foyer for a few moments until she seemed to collect herself.

  “I’m sorry, let me take your jacket.”

  He shrugged out of it and handed it to her. “Have you eaten?” she asked after she hung it in the closet off the entryway.

  “No. I was going to ask if you wanted to grab something after we were done,” he said. He didn’t want to admit, even to himself, how much he had wanted her to agree.

  “Do you like Italian?” she asked. “I picked up some takeout on the way home.”

  “Italian’s great. If my mother were here, she’d tell you I never met a pasta dish I didn’t like.”

  She looked vaguely surprised at his mention of his mother, as if she’d never given the matter of his parentage much thought. “Does your family live in Salt Lake?” she asked as she led the way through the small house toward the kitchen.

  “We’re all over. My parents split up when I was a kid. Mom lives in Liberty near my ranch—she’s an elementary school principal—and my dad has a carpentry shop in Las Vegas. I have an older brother who has lived all over the West but currently hangs his hat in Park City. He’s with the FBI.”

  “FBI? Really? So I guess you both work closely with criminals.”

  He sent her an amused look. “Something like that.”

  The kitchen reminded him of a Tuscan farmhouse, with warm yellow stuccoed walls and pots hanging from a center island. It looked comfortable and well-used. He leaned a hip against the counter as he watched her transfer a pan from the oven to a dining table set in a small alcove ove
rlooking her backyard.

  “So your parents had just two boys?” she asked, her hands too busy with setting out food to notice the reaction he knew he wouldn’t be able to hide at her innocent question.

  He thought of Charlotte—little Charley—with her blond curls and her sweet smile. Guilt socked him in the gut, as it always did. “We had a little sister but we lost her when she was three.”

  It was his easy, glib answer, the one he used when he didn’t want to get into the whole story. He knew she would assume Charlotte died. Most people did. It was often easier to let them think that than going into all the grim details of the kidnapping, which would inevitably dominate the conversation for some time.

  “Oh. I’m so sorry.” Compassion turned her eyes a dewy midnight blue and filled him with guilt at his lie of omission.

  He chose to deal with it by changing the subject quickly. “Everything looks delicious. This is great. You didn’t have to go to so much trouble.”

  “I didn’t do anything but pick up the lasagna from a restaurant. I wish I could say I made it, but Kate—my roommate—is the expert in the kitchen. I’m learning from her but I still am an amateur. I thought she would be here to join us but her shift was changed at the hospital. You just missed her.”

  Did she tell him that to subtly remind him this wasn’t a date? he wondered. That even though they were two adults enjoying a delicious meal alone together, he shouldn’t make any kind of leap in logic about it?

  Too bad the roommate wasn’t here. There was an intimacy to being alone together here that he would have preferred to avoid, given his attraction to her.

  Objectivity, he reminded himself as he poured wine for both of them. This was just another interview, just like dozens of others he’d done for this book.

  This wasn’t so bad, Taylor thought a few moments later as she took another bit of rich, spicy lasagna.

  All her nervousness had been for nothing. Wyatt seemed to find nothing odd about sharing a meal before they got down to the gritty business of going over the facts in Hunter’s case. As they enjoyed the delectable pasta and crusty Italian bread, they talked of mundane matters—her classes, his ranch, how long she’d lived in the house.

  “I bought it after my father died four years ago.”

  “Your mother died when you were just a little girl. Six, isn’t that right?”

  The question was a blunt reminder of the unpalatable fact that he knew far more about her than she did about him. She couldn’t help feeling a little exposed that so many private details of her life had become public knowledge after Hunter’s arrest. Her sense of invasion made her reply sharper than she had intended.

  “And I guess that’s the explanation you’re going to use for everything that supposedly went wrong with Hunter.”

  He looked surprised by the sudden attack, then thoughtful. “No. I was just thinking how tough that must have been on you, losing a mother at such an early age.”

  The age hadn’t been as difficult as the circumstances of her mother’s death. “My mother was…ill for a long time before she died. I don’t remember her any other way.”

  She didn’t add that Angela Bradshaw had suffered from a grab bag of mental health issues or that few of the snippets of memory she had of her mother were pleasant.

  “What was Hunter like as a big brother?”

  She gave him a cool look over the lip of her wineglass. “Is this on the record?”

  “Up to you.”

  She debated exactly what to tell him as the spectres of those dark family secrets loomed. For so much of her life, she had tried to pretend those first six years didn’t exist, that they were just some murky nightmare.

  She didn’t like remembering how bad things had been as Angela’s condition deteriorated. She didn’t talk about it with anyone—choosing to break her silence to someone writing a book didn’t seem the greatest idea.

  On the other hand, her ultimate goal was to convince Wyatt that Hunter wasn’t capable of murdering anyone. To do that, she would have to tell him at least something of their childhood.

  “He was older than me by five years. I guess you know that.”

  “So that makes you twenty-six.”

  “Right. Five years doesn’t seem like much when you’re thirty-one and twenty-six, but take away a few decades and it’s a huge chasm at eleven and six. I think most boys that age would rather be caught in their Underoos on the school playground than be seen hanging around with their little sisters, but Hunter never seemed to mind me tagging after him. He was a great brother and never treated me with anything but love and kindness. I don’t remember him ever yelling at me or teasing me. He looked out for me. Protected me.”

  He frowned at this. “Against what?”

  She should tell him now. This was the perfect opportunity. The words hovered inside her, but in the end she chickened out. Once he knew the truth about Angela, he would jump to more wrong conclusions about Hunter—and about her.

  “He protected me against anything that threatened me,” she said instead. “I love him and I know him, probably better than anyone else in the world. He can be a tough man when it’s necessary. A hard one. He has a strong sense of justice and maybe sees things as too black or white, but no matter what the provocation, he would never murder anyone. The man I know—the man I grew up in the same house with, simply isn’t capable of it.”

  “Nice opening statement, Counselor.”

  Her smile was small and rueful. “Sorry. I guess I tend to come off a little strong. I probably sound like a zealot.”

  “You sound like a loving sister trying to help her brother.”

  Trying, maybe, but for all her efforts, she didn’t seem to have been accomplishing much. Spinning her wheels, that’s all she seemed to be doing since his conviction.

  They had finished eating, she saw, and though under other circumstances she would have enjoyed lingering around the table and learning more about him, she knew she couldn’t afford to waste his time. “I have tiramisu. If you’d like, we can have coffee with it in my office while I show you the evidence I’ve collected since the trial.”

  “Sounds great.”

  She loved her small office, filled with comfortable, favorite pieces of furniture she had moved here from her father’s library after his death when she and Hunter sold the house on Walker Lane. No surprise, Hunter hadn’t wanted any of it. As far back as she could remember, he and the Judge had a stormy relationship and she was fairly certain Hunter had few pleasant memories of the oak-paneled room where their father had presided with such a firm hand.

  She found it peaceful, though. This was where she worked, where she preferred to study. She and Kate had crammed for many med school exams behind this desk. It had always been a refuge from the stress of life.

  But when she walked inside with Wyatt behind her, the room seemed to shrink. He had such a commanding presence, a masculine confidence she found entirely too attractive.

  Wyatt took the burgundy leather armchair opposite her desk, stretched out his long legs, and watched her expectantly.

  Taylor didn’t quite know where to start. She had volumes of information carefully organized—court transcripts, the police report, newspaper clippings, eyewitness reports. She had more files on her computer, information she regularly dumped to her laptop.

  What would he find most compelling? she wondered.

  “You were in the courtroom so you know the basics of the case,” she began.

  “I wasn’t there every day,” he answered, “but I have studied the court transcript extensively.”

  Sitting behind the desk with him on the other side seemed entirely too formal, so she chose to perch on the edge, trying not to fidget. “Then you know the state’s case against Hunter was completely circumstantial. They had nothing to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hunter killed Dru or Mickie.”

  “It was circumstantial but it was strong. His fingerprints were all over the scene.”

  “H
e dated Dru for eighteen months. It would have been more unusual if his fingerprints weren’t there! Don’t you find it significant that they weren’t on the murder weapon?”

  “You mean the murder weapon that just happened to be registered to your brother?”

  “Anyone could have fired that gun! He gave it to Dru the week before the murders, for protection after she received death threats.”

  Wyatt frowned. “So he says. No one could substantiate either the death threats or your brother’s claim that he gave her his weapon. If she was threatened, she didn’t tell anyone else but your brother.”

  As it always did when she heard the evidence against her brother, Taylor’s blood pressure seemed to rise. She wanted to snap back an angry retort, but that wouldn’t accomplish her goal. She was supposed to be showing him new facts, convincing him of Hunter’s evidence, not rehashing all the damning evidence from the trial.

  “My brother was an experienced detective,” she said after a moment of deep breathing for calm. “Don’t you think if he was going to kill someone with his own weapon he would certainly be smart enough not to leave it behind for the whole world to find?”

  She didn’t give him time to respond. “And let’s focus on the weapon. It was wiped clean, right? But the state crime lab did retrieve one partial from the safety. Did you know that?”

  He frowned, his expression puzzled. “I don’t believe I remember hearing that.”

  “You didn’t know because it never came out at trial,” she answered. “I only found out myself after Hunter’s conviction, when I was contacted by the crime lab technician who couldn’t figure out why her report about the fingerprint—that didn’t belong to Hunter or to Dru or Mickie—wasn’t used by the defense.”

  “Good question. Why wasn’t it?”

  “Because we didn’t know about it! It was never included in discovery, and now the entire report and photographs of the partial seem to have disappeared, the hard copies and the computer files.”

  “Is that the basis for your appeal?”