Deadly Christmas Duty

by Virginia Vaughan

  Melinda wouldn’t like it. And he wouldn’t like leaving her alone, but he would make certain she was protected while he was gone. Peterson had proven himself trustworthy in Noah’s eyes, and he felt sure he would watch over her for one day.

  He was so caught up in making his plans that he didn’t even see Melinda had entered the room.

  She stared at the file he’d left open on the table with an image of her battered face, clear as day. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “I know you could never want someone like me.” Her voice had a hint of sorrow to it that angered him.

  “Do you think I blame you for what happened with your husband? I’m proud of you for standing up to him, for fighting back.”

  “I should have done it sooner. Maybe then he would be alive.”

  “Or maybe he would have killed you. You did what you had to do, Melinda, and you survived. That’s an amazing thing. It’s not something to feel guilty about.”

  “Is that how you feel about what you did?”

  For a moment he was confused. Was she talking about the embassy and the people he’d let die? Or letting down Nikki?

  She must have seen the confused look on his face because she clarified. “I’m talking about what happened with your father.”

  That caught him off guard and nearly knocked the breath from him. “So you know about that?” Had Nikki confided in her and she’d waited this long, only to throw that incident in his face?

  She looked down as she revealed the source of her information. “Wayne mentioned it to me.”

  Noah turned away from her. That blow was difficult to take.

  “He was at the police station. I think he was trying to make himself look better by tearing you down.”

  “I see it worked.”

  “No, Noah, it didn’t. I know it was justified and you were acquitted. I only want to know if that makes it feel better, because I’ve been sick to my stomach since the day that happened with Sean. No matter what he did to me, he didn’t deserve to die. I took his life. I took him away from his child.”

  “A child he didn’t even want, Melinda. A child he was trying to murder.”

  She took in a deep breath to try to slow down the fiery pace they were heading toward. “All I’m saying is it changed me. I wonder if it changed you, as well?”

  How did he even answer that? Of course it had changed him. He’d done his duty to protect his sister, but only after they’d both suffered years of abuse. He hadn’t acted swiftly enough then, and he hadn’t acted swiftly enough at the embassy. People died because of it, his father included. “I did what I had to do,” he told her. “So did you. That’s the only thing that matters.”

  He closed the file and his laptop. “I need to make a trip tomorrow. I want to go to Lakewater.”

  “Why? You have the report. You know what happened.”

  “There are always things that aren’t in the report. Look, Melinda, I don’t believe this is Sean, but we need to put this question to rest, not only so we can find the person who has targeted you, but so that you can finally have peace about it, too. I can see how this has been weighing on you all these years. I want to finally put this behind you.”

  He touched her beautiful, delicate face, and his heart broke at all she’d been through.

  “I’m afraid,” she finally confessed, her brown eyes staring up into his.

  He longed to pull her into his arms and reassure her, but what she’d said about Wayne troubled him. Had he managed to plant doubts in her mind about him? Had her opinion changed? It seemed to him she could see right through him to his fears and insecurities. “I know how frightening it can be to face your past. But if you’re not ready, then I understand. I still need to go. Will that be okay?”

  “I understand why you think you have to go,” she told him, “but I can’t go back there. I won’t.”

  “I’ll just be gone one day. I’ll drop you off at the police station after we take Ramey to school, then I’ll be back by the afternoon.”

  “I don’t like it, but I won’t stop you. I hope you’re not disappointed at what you find.” She padded across the floor and disappeared back into the bedroom.

  He got up and stared out at the lake in the distance, and his mind turned to God. He wished he had more faith that God would watch over her and keep her safe, but he’d lost his trust in God months ago. Terrible things kept happening, and the God he’d trusted for most of his life allowed it.

  Yet he couldn’t deny that in his most frantic state, when he’d thought Melinda had drowned, he’d called out to God for help and, that time at least, He’d come through. Melinda had been okay.

  But Nikki hadn’t been okay.

  And neither had his teammates.

  Evil and chaos had reigned that night three months ago in Libya, and he could still hear the screams of rage and the cries for help. He still tasted the smoke and soot that had filled his lungs as he crawled through the embassy to find survivors.

  He hadn’t even had the opportunity to tell Melinda about his time in Libya or what he really did for a living now. But his covert security training didn’t seem to be making much difference in keeping her safe now.

  Noah sank down into the cushions of the sofa. If God wanted to help him out by watching over Melinda and Ramey a little closer tomorrow, that would be fine by him. Because tomorrow morning he was headed to Lakewater, Tennessee, and he was going to find out the truth about Sean Steele’s death.

  SEVEN

  Lakewater, Tennessee, turned out to be everything Noah had expected it to be. It was smaller than Daytonville and even smaller than the place he and Nikki had grown up. The town had two stoplights on Main Street, and most of its shops were boarded up and covered with graffiti.

  He found the sheriff’s office and parked the car, bracing himself for what he was about to learn. In all likelihood it wouldn’t be pleasant, but he had to do this if he wanted to put the question of Sean Steele to rest.

  He got out of the car and walked inside. He told the desk clerk what he was looking for, and was greeted a few minutes later by a deputy with a name tag that read Walters. Noah stood, shook his hand and introduced himself.

  “You’re here about the Steele case? I faxed a copy of that file over to Chief Peterson of the Daytonville Alabama Police Department. Are you one of them?”

  “Not quite. Chief Peterson did show me the file, but I had some more questions about the case. I was hoping by coming here I could clear up some things.”

  “What’s your concern in this matter, Mr. Cason?”

  “Well, I’m a friend of Melinda Steele. I’m acting on her behalf. There may be a chance Sean is alive.”

  Deputy Walters shook his head. “Not likely.” He waved Noah back through the bullpen and into what looked like an evidence room. “We had some clothes wash up a few years ago. There was no one around to identify it, but we’re all pretty sure it belonged to Sean.” He dug through a box and produced a plastic bag with pieces of clothing inside.

  “That wasn’t in the report you faxed over.”

  “It’s not part of that file, since it’s never been officially identified.”

  “Why do you think it belonged to him?”

  “There’s stitching on this piece that looks like an S. Sean always had initials stitched into his shirts. It was one of those things everyone knew about him. I think he thought it made him look cool or something.”

  “You knew Sean and Melinda?”

  “Sure, I knew them. We all grew up together.”

  “So you knew about the abuse she suffered? Yet he was never arrested on domestic violence charges?”

  “Everyone knew how Sean was, but there was never enough evidence to convict him. The women, Melinda included, always recanted.”

  Noah sighed. He wa
s tired of hearing that phrase. Not enough evidence. Not enough to implicate Wayne in Nikki’s disappearance. Not enough to authorize a rescue plan on the embassy.

  “And the day he died. Tell me what happened.”

  “You’ve read the report. Sean and Melinda went out on the boat. Only Melinda came back. She claimed he’d tried to drown her and went overboard. It was clear she’d taken a beating. We searched the lake but never found his body. We did find blood on the boat that turned out to be his.”

  “And you’ve never had any reason to suspect he didn’t die that day?”

  Deputy Walters shook his head. “None.”

  “I’d like to see where it happened,” Noah said. “Will you take me out there?”

  Noah rode with Deputy Walters out to a spot on the lake and climbed out of the car.

  “Of course, you can’t see the exact spot from here,” Walters said, “but they were docked out that way. There are a lot of rock formations in this lake. I suspect he either hit his head when he fell or hit one of those rocks and blood splattered. Either way, he never resurfaced.”

  The lake was murky, and seeing to the bottom was impossible. He imagined the moment, Sean bringing her out here and holding her down, trying to drown her, and Melinda fighting back. He’d seen her spunk and determination. Her fight to live must have surprised him. He liked that.

  “What about her family?” he asked the deputy. “What did they think about her story?”

  “What family? Melinda had no family. She was raised by her grandmother, who died when she was sixteen. She was already dating Sean so she moved in with the Steele family, and a few years later she married him.”

  That saddened him to hear. She’d had no one to look out for her as a kid except for an aging grandmother. At least he and Nikki had had one another.

  “How well did you know them?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a small town. Like I said, we all went to school together. Everyone knows everyone else’s business.”

  “What about Sean’s family? How did they react?”

  “Oh well, they were outraged, as you can imagine. It was only his mom and younger brother still living here. The youngest kid, Tyler, moved out of state five years ago, not long after his mother passed away. Sean’s older brother, Ray, is serving time upstate.”

  “On what charge?”

  “Gun trafficking. He was caught up in a bust fifteen years ago by ATF. It was big news around here. He’s serving thirty years. There were a few cousins, but they’ve mostly moved on with their lives.”

  “Any who might want to take revenge on Melinda?”

  “After all this time? Doubtful. They were pretty riled up at the time, but once Melinda left town, it eventually all blew over. Sean’s mom died two years after Melinda left town, and like I said, his younger brother, Tyler, left town soon after.”

  “Any idea where Tyler is now?”

  “Atlanta, last I heard. No one around here has heard from him in years.”

  Noah shook Deputy Walters’s hand. “Thank you for your time,” he told him. “I think I’ve seen enough.”

  He walked back to his car and headed back toward Daytonville. No wonder she had run from this place. He wished she’d gotten out sooner, and never gotten involved with Sean Steele in the first place. This was the kind of life any of them could have gotten caught up in. If he hadn’t joined the navy and learned discipline and routine, he might have become like Sean or like his father, violent and mean. Melinda had managed to get away from that life, too, but she’d paid a big price for her escape.

  Was it possible Sean had somehow survived that day? It didn’t make sense. Had he been alive, he would have taken his revenge a long time ago. And Noah couldn’t imagine he would have missed his own mother’s funeral.

  No, Sean Steele was dead and gone. He was even more sure of it than before he’d come.

  But it wouldn’t hurt to look into Tyler. It was possible Sean’s brother could look enough like him to pass for him in a sketch, and no one around here knew his whereabouts.

  * * *

  Noah turned on the windshield wipers as freezing rain began to fall. It was unusual weather for Alabama, but it had been an especially cold season so far. He was sixty miles from home...or at least what he was considering home for now. It amazed him how easily that image of home morphed into an image of Melinda wrapped in his arms.

  He flipped on the radio, but the only station he could get reception on was a talk radio station, and the big news on that channel was the embassy attack and the ensuing drama of the contractors who’d been left out in the cold. For the first time in weeks, that hadn’t been the thing weighing down his mind. In fact, now all that drama seemed a lifetime away. Keeping Melinda and Ramey safe was his only concern now.

  Yet he couldn’t let the events from that night go. He’d been foolish, pushing for his team to wait on official approval. He’d been so used to following rules and procedures that he’d allowed his hesitancy to cost lives.

  He flipped off the radio. His life was spiraling out of control, and he didn’t know how to stop it. He was worried about keeping Melinda safe, and even more worried about guarding his heart against her. He’d already let Nikki down, and he couldn’t undo that. He’d never met any woman like Melinda. Her strength and determination for her son was admirable. He loved the way she fought for her son and did everything she could to make sure he knew he was loved. It was such a difference from the way he’d been raised. What would his life have been like if his mother had been as kind and gentle as Melinda? He couldn’t even imagine it.

  He didn’t often think about settling down and starting a family. When he did, his usual response was just to push it out of his mind. He’d always believed he wasn’t the type of person who got the wife and family. It was no secret why. He was afraid. He’d always been concerned about turning into his father. He’d grown up in violence, and his job now was all about violence. But he was good at what he did, and that frightened him even more. He never wanted to hurt a family the way his father had hurt theirs. He wouldn’t be responsible for creating another messed-up person like himself.

  But maybe, with someone like Melinda on his side, things would be different.

  It was a surprising thought, and he didn’t dismiss it as quickly as he should have. That hesitation, those few moments of thinking about it, planted a seed in his mind that he couldn’t get rid of.

  Was it possible?

  He rubbed his face.

  It used to be so much easier to push away those urges. He told himself lies that he was always meant to stay single and live the bachelor life. Yet he had never before come across a woman he wanted to make those things happen with. Melinda had changed all that.

  He wanted her. He wanted to build a life with her and raise children with her. Yet even as he dreamed about having those things, he also knew she’d be smart to run the other way. He would never make a good husband or father. Thinking of it was too tempting. He wouldn’t even daydream about it anymore.

  He had to find a way to keep himself from falling hard for the beautiful brunette—like focusing on finding the person terrorizing her. Someone had a real serious hatred for her, and he couldn’t imagine why. What could a widowed single mother have done to anyone to elicit such rage? But she was so much more than that. She was also a prosecuting attorney who’d incarcerated many people, although Peterson had said those leads had gone cold.

  She’d also taken the time to befriend a woman like Nikki, someone she’d seen was in the same boat she’d been in, and tried to convince her to leave her abusive situation.

  He sighed thinking about Nikki. She must have felt so trapped. He knew he did. He’d been trapped in that tunnel of violence ever since he could remember. He could play the dutiful soldier, following the rules and doing everything just and right. The news media were calling him and his f
riends heroes, but he felt nothing like one. Even on his best days, he couldn’t get free of that tight grip his past still had on him. And it seemed like Melinda couldn’t get rid of the grip her past had on her.

  Together, they made quite a pair.

  An hour later he pulled up at the house. Peterson was sitting in his car in the driveway, ready to be relieved. Noah had messaged him a half hour ago from a gas station that he was nearly there.

  “Everything okay today?” he asked.

  “A-okay,” Peterson responded. “But I’m glad you’re back. This being on alert all day is exhausting.”

  “Tell me about it,” Noah stated.

  “How did your mission go?”

  “Good. I’m convinced it’s not him, but he has a brother we might want to check into.”

  “Great. We’ll do that tomorrow,” Peterson said before starting up his car and driving off.

  “See you then,” Noah called.

  He walked into the house and saw the light still on in the den and a roaring fire in the fireplace. Melinda was curled up on the couch with papers spread around her, but she was asleep. He reached for a blanket behind her to cover her with, but she jumped, suddenly awake.

  “You frightened me,” she said, then laughed. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I was trying to wait up for you.”

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  She smiled at him. “I wanted to see you and find out how it went. Did you find what you were looking for?”

  He stared at the fire then turned back to her. “I don’t believe Sean is alive, Melinda. Whoever this is after you, it’s not him.”

  She leaned back against the couch and studied him. “I’m not sure I believe that yet. He was so familiar.”