Secrets Rising

by Suzanne McMinn

  He’d made her way too happy way too many times last night. Effortlessly, it seemed.

  And still he sat here in her office, all steady and dangerously sexy-looking, as if he was waiting for something. He wasn’t finished, whatever it was he’d come to speak to her about. And as long as he was here, she was going to have sex on the brain and Mary wasn’t helping.

  “I have to go. I’ll call you later, okay?” She put the phone down after Mary’d said goodbye. “Um, is there something else you want with me?”

  “I think something’s going on, and I think you need to know.”

  “Didn’t we already discuss this?” She felt a trickle of sweat between her breasts and the airconditioning was working, so that wasn’t it. “It was just a one-night stand. I’m sure you’ve had them before. Who hasn’t?” Liar.

  “I wasn’t talking about last night. Or about us.”

  Heat flushed her entire body. “Oh.” Could she possibly be more stupid and one-track-minded?

  She had a serious case of falling in lust with him, that’s all. He was drop-dead, steal-your-breath handsome. But so what. Ray had been a looker, too. She mustered her self-control. Again. She forced herself to look for flaws, and found a few. His nose was slightly crooked. There was a scar along his jaw, and another one near his temple. He lived hard. He was a cop.

  And there was, suddenly, a deadly serious cop look in his eyes.

  A nervous prickle moved up her spine. “So what were you talking about?”

  “Is there some reason,” he said quietly, “that someone would be digging around in the back of your farmhouse?”

  Chapter 8

  Keely went from a very pretty blush to white in the time it took Jake to blink. The bad feeling that had come calling out at her farm settled into permanent residence in his gut.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” She got up out of her chair, paced in the very tiny space behind her desk as if suddenly ready to crawl out of her skin. She stopped, her strangely desperate eyes locked on his. “Did you see anyone?”

  “They tried to run me down, or at least they would have if I hadn’t gotten out of the way. They were in a pickup truck in your barn.”

  “What?”

  “The barn doors were shut and they just came smashing through the doors like a bat out of hell.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “Know anybody with a white pickup?”

  “I have a white pickup!”

  “Where is it?”

  “It’s still at Dickie’s. The mechanic,” she explained.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I can find out. But wait. What’s this about the ground being dug up?”

  “There was freshly turned dirt in back of the house, where some pots of rosebushes were sitting like you were going to plant them. It was still damp and there was a hole. This isn’t something that happened when the rescue guys were out there.” And whoever had been digging, they hadn’t wanted him to find them still on the place.

  But why?

  She turned even whiter, if that was possible. “Any police crime-scene tape, anything like that?”

  Crime-scene tape?

  “No. Why?”

  She shook her head. “I was just wondering.”

  Just wondering if there was crime-scene tape around her house? Nope, he wasn’t buying that blow-off.

  “That wasn’t the police barreling out of your barn, Keely.”

  She frowned. “Yes, I know.” She looked confused, like she was struggling to put it all together. “I just was wondering if that was something separate from what you saw dug up. But that doesn’t make sense, does it?”

  None of it made sense to him.

  He didn’t want to be worried about her, but he was, and it was at least a welcome replacement to the unallowable beat of desire that had pulsed inside him when she’d jumped to the wrong conclusion about what he wanted to discuss.

  She was wearing a weathered West Virginia University blue-and-gold T-shirt and a clean pair of jeans, and she looked more like she was about twenty-one than…Maybe thirty? Today was her birthday, he remembered.

  She sat back down and picked up the phone, jabbed numbers in. “Hi, this is—” Her head turned up at Jake. “Do you mind?”

  “Yes.”

  Exasperation tightened her features when he didn’t leave, which she obviously wanted him to do. He wasn’t leaving till he knew what was going on, why she’d reacted the way she had to what he’d told her, and if she was in any kind of danger.

  He shouldn’t give a damn. He’d slept with her, but so what? It was a one-night stand, just like she’d so pointedly said. Clearly, he was insane, but he wasn’t leaving till he was sure she was all right. She was scared, and like last night, he was going to be there for her till he was sure she was safe.

  As soon as he was sure of that, he could go back across the road and forget about her completely.

  “—Keely Schiffer,” she was saying into the phone. She’d swiveled her chair around as if by simply ignoring him, he’d disappear. “I called earlier about making a report. I was wondering—No, I know you said they were too busy to get out here to take my statement yet. But I was wondering if troopers had gone out to the farm? Jake Malloy told me that there had been some digging out there today. And someone tried to run him down coming out of my barn. Smashed the barn doors coming out.”

  A statement? She’d called earlier about making a statement to the cops. Jake watched her, the bad feeling gnawing harder at him. He remembered the way she’d seemed almost…desperate for him to come in her house the day before, how she’d seemed to not want to be alone. It had been a passing impression at the time, but now he wondered if it was connected to this statement she was waiting to make to the police. Something had happened at the farmhouse before he’d arrived, before the quake.

  Something that had scared her.

  Again, bad sign that he wasn’t walking out the door. He would need to make his own statement to the police, though.

  But the longer he hung around, the more he could be sucked in to whatever was going on in Keely’s life. What if he did just walk away and then something happened to her? He couldn’t live with that. He’d just have to be careful, watch his back while he was watching hers, and not get sucked in.

  Keely’s shoulders remained tight, tense. “Evidence could be disturbed,” she was saying. “What if—What if it goes missing? I mean—” She pressed her hand into her forehead. “Okay. I know. You’ll get out there as soon as you can. I know that.” Another beat. “Jake Malloy.” She gave the address of the rental house. “I’m sure he’d be happy to make a statement, as well. Thank you.” She put the phone down.

  “The cops been out there?”

  “Not yet. She said someone was supposed to be out there this afternoon. They’ll want a statement from you, too.”

  “Want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “No.”

  “You look scared, Keely.”

  “I’m okay.” She didn’t look okay, or sound okay, but she was damn sure going to try and fake it. She stood, walked around the desk and reached for the doorknob. She was throwing him out of her office.

  He rose, fast, and put his hand over hers, stilling hers before she could turn the knob. She lifted bright, still scared but faking-it-for-all-she-was-worth eyes to his. He couldn’t shake the bad feeling about what was happening to her.

  “Look, thank you for telling me,” she said. “Thank you for your concern. But this is my business. It’s police business.”

  “The police don’t seem to be helping.”

  “They’re busy, that’s all. We had an earthquake, remember?”

  Oh, he remembered. And he couldn’t help catching the defensive thread in her voice, or the way it slightly shook.

  “Yes, I remember.”

  The flash of awkward intimacy in her eyes was his immediate and torturous reward. The apples of her cheeks pinkened again. He remember
ed how sweet-soft her skin had been….

  He veered the subject away from that thought. “I’m a cop, too, Keely.”

  “You’re not a cop here. And I have a store that needs my attention.” Her voice came out slightly breathy.

  She was upset about whatever was going on back at her farm, but she wasn’t unaffected by his nearness, too. The buzz of awareness that had started humming between them last night hadn’t diminished any—but she wasn’t that same naive-seeming, friendly woman. She’d opened up to him last night in ways he’d never expected, and now she was all closed up again in whatever shell it was that she used to armor herself against the world. Or maybe just men.

  And maybe this thing between them had a mind of its own because he could tell she was fighting it just like he was. And not doing so good. Like him on that, too.

  “I just don’t like it that you’re scared,” he admitted quietly. “I want to help if I can.” Something about her was softening him, even if he didn’t like it. He brought his hand up over her arm, barely realizing he was doing it.

  “I’d thank you for that, but I’m not scared so much as I’m mad.” Her voice rose.

  “What are you mad about, Keely?”

  He had a feeling she was holding a lot inside. She was sweet and good and didn’t want to speak ill of the dead, but she’d been hurt in her life and she had to have some anger inside over it. He knew all about holding anger inside. Maybe he didn’t want her to end up like him, bitter and isolated.

  “I want to be your friend,” he said. Friendship. That was easy. He could do friendship. “Tell me why you’re mad. You deserve to be mad, about lots of things. You lost your house. You lost your husband. Maybe you’ve lost other things I don’t even know about.”

  She blinked and he could see something moist in her eyes. “Yeah. I’m mad about my house falling down around me. You know how old that house was?”

  “How old?”

  “A hundred years. A hundred years old! And now it’s gone. I’m the fourth generation in my family to live in that house, and the last one now.”

  “There were a lot of things in that house. Pictures, antiques. Probably a lot of sentimental value in those things, memories.”

  A tear swelled in her gaze. She nodded. “My great-grandmother’s butter churns. My grandmother’s nativity collection. My great-grandfather’s Civil War rifle. The high chair my grandfather made for my father, carved it himself. It’s all gone. And it just seems so senseless.” Her shoulders sagged slightly. “A lot of things in life are senseless.”

  “I had a friend die recently,” Jake said. “He was young, smart, had his whole life ahead of him.” He sighed. “It wasn’t just senseless, it was unnecessary.”

  “How’d he die?”

  “We were undercover, cracking a drug ring. Things went bad. Brian got shot. The damn house was on fire, meth everywhere. There was a kid in the house and there was no way I could take out both of them at once. I saved the kid. Before I could go back in, the house blew.” His chest banded. Guilt threatened to swallow him. They’d called him a hero for saving that little girl. He hadn’t felt like much of a hero.

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice lowered, softened. “I’m so sorry.”

  He could have drowned in her eyes. Sympathy. He didn’t want it, but the understanding in her gaze, understanding of pain and loss, felt good in some unexpected way at the same time that it made him uncomfortable.

  “You lost your husband,” he pointed out, changing the topic.

  She said nothing.

  “Talk to me, Keely. Tell me what happened to him.”

  “He made a bad decision, drove off in a downpour, flood conditions. His car got washed away at a low-water bridge. He drowned.”

  Now he knew why she’d been so adamant yesterday about the dangerous driving conditions in the storm.

  “I’m mad about that,” she said suddenly, sharply. “He knew better. He had bad judgment, about a lot of things.”

  “Did he hurt you, Keely?” He cared, more than he liked.

  “He didn’t hit me or anything, if that’s what you mean.”

  “A man doesn’t have to hit a woman to hurt her.”

  She was silent for a long breath. “He didn’t work at all for years, went to school, but never finished. Then he hurt his back on the farm and decided he was going to be a writer. Supposedly. He never sold anything, or even tried to get anything published that I know about. He put us in debt when he bought the store. Then he didn’t work it like he said he would. He was always gone. He’d come back with inventory for the store, antiques, small things for the jewelry case by the register, but I never knew where he got them. I was always scared they were stolen because I couldn’t see where he had the money to buy anything. He said he got stuff at estate auctions, but I didn’t believe him. And he cheated on me.” Her chin lifted. “More than once. And I didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t leave him. I’m mad about that, too. I’m mad at myself.”

  “He’s gone now. You get to start over.” It blew his mind to think someone would cheat on this beautiful woman. No wonder she didn’t like promises. She’d had plenty of them broken…important ones.

  “Maybe. I’m mad that there’s something buried in my garden back at the farm.”

  She bit her lip and he knew she hadn’t meant to tell him that much. His mind stumbled over what she’d said, locked on.

  No wonder she’d been nervous the day before.

  “What do you think was buried there?”

  He kept his hand on her arm. She stared back at him for a long beat then looked aside.

  “I found a skull, a human skull, yesterday when I was getting ready to plant some roses.” Her voice was low, slightly trembly now. “Ray’s the one who dug that garden up last fall, tore some old bushes out. Maybe he put that skull there. Maybe my husband was a murderer. And maybe it’s gone now because the state troopers didn’t get out there soon enough. I’m mad about that, too.” She gave a little laugh that didn’t sound like she thought anything was funny. “I shouldn’t get started on all I’m mad about.”

  “Maybe you should get it out more often.” He waited until she looked back at him. “Stop keeping the anger inside.” He was one to talk, he realized. “You don’t have anything to be ashamed of, you know. You didn’t do anything wrong. It was your husband who did.”

  If her husband wasn’t already on his way to hell, he’d have been happy to give him a send-off. If it wasn’t bad enough what Ray had done when he was alive, maybe he’d also left her a terrible secret to deal with after his death. A surge of protectiveness toward her rose inside him.

  “I was a coward. I didn’t want to admit I’d made a mistake, so I stayed with him.”

  Ah, hell. He wanted to pull her into his arms. He wanted to comfort her, make her feel better somehow.

  “You’re awfully hard on yourself.”

  “Somebody’s got to be.”

  “Then maybe you should take a break, give somebody else a turn. And if nobody else steps up to the plate, maybe you don’t deserve it.” He’d seen her parents with her. Her friends. He didn’t think anyone else was going to be hard on Keely the way she was on herself. People cared about her. She just didn’t care about herself so much.

  “You barely know me.”

  He realized he was still stroking his fingers up and down her arm and that she’d let go of the doorknob. She wasn’t trying to escape him. He didn’t mean to, but he pulled her closer and she let him.

  Her nose and lips and seductive apple scent were that close, a breath away. He could kiss her and she wouldn’t stop him, he sensed.

  I want to be your friend. That was what he’d told her.

  “I think we level-jumped on our relationship a little last night,” he said. He forcibly made himself let go of her arm, take a half step back in the cramped space of her office. Strangers to lovers in a matter of hours. It was clouding the issue at hand, which was making sure Keely was safe. “I
get to be concerned about you now, and I am concerned. Someone was out there at your farm today. Someone was looking for something. Who knew about you finding it?”

  She straightened her shoulders, seemed to be shoring up her defenses, too, as if she was just as aware that things had almost gotten out of hand again.

  “The police. My family and friends.” She shrugged. “That’s all. It’s not something I really want to spread around.”

  “Your family and friends might have told someone. Other people might have overheard. Did you tell your parents back at the farm this morning?” They’d been surrounded by rescue workers then. Anyone could have overheard.

  “No, at least not the whole story. I didn’t tell them till later, back at their house when I called the police. But they could have mentioned it to someone, I guess. I want to go out to the farm. I want to see if the skull is still there.”

  “That wouldn’t be safe, Keely.”

  “I guess. But I want to see what I can salvage from the house, too.”

  “Not safe,” he repeated firmly. “No guessing about it. Someone was out there. And the dirt was freshly turned. See what you can salvage after the police are finished—they won’t want you touching anything till then anyway. Someone’s interested in what you found. Someone besides the police. And you know who that would be.”

  Someone who knew about the murder wanted it covered up.

  “You’re right. I know that. I won’t go out there.”

  She looked scared enough that he believed her, but that didn’t mean she was safe.

  “But then…” She frowned. Her eyes lit slightly. “If there’s somebody looking for it, then that would mean it wasn’t Ray.”

  She didn’t want to believe her husband had been a murderer. He could understand that. She was ashamed of Ray’s actions, even though she wasn’t responsible for them.

  “Or it means Ray didn’t act alone,” he pointed out. That seemed more likely.

  She swallowed hard and her mouth set grimly. “Yeah, that’s a possibility, too.”

  “You should be careful,” he said.

  “I don’t know anything. Whatever happened, whether it was Ray or someone else who put that skull there, I don’t know anything about it. I just know Ray dug that garden up last fall. The ground out there wasn’t touched till yesterday when I got ready to plant the roses. I don’t know why he wanted to pull the bushes out last fall. He knew I wasn’t going to plant anything new till spring, but he insisted and said he’d plant the roses for me, too. It wasn’t really like him to do something in advance like that, before it had to be done, or to work in the garden at all. He had a bad back.”