by Cara McKenna
“Morning, shithead.” Vince shed his jacket but left his holster on, heading for the cupboards to scavenge. “Figured I’d find you dead asleep.”
Casey shook his head. “Too wired from what we saw to relax.”
Vince nodded and left the topic there, to be resumed once he was caffeinated. Instead he asked, “Mom okay?”
“Yeah, she’s having a quiet one.”
“Good.” Vince felt something odd and squishy wriggle in his chest, to hear his brother sounding involved. He strangled the warm fuzzy, not willing to get attached to the development. Kid could be gone the second something shiny enough winked in the distance.
Vince found a box of crackers in the cupboard and a jar of Skippy.
“Kim in the air yet?” Case asked.
“Yeah. Or stuck in Salt Lake on her layover.” Wherever she was, it was too fucking far away from him. And it was way too much to hope for, thinking maybe she’d be coming back again.
“You okay with that?”
He shrugged, smearing a cracker with peanut butter. Everything about their acquaintance had been too intense to last. What did people say about those romances? Burn twice as hot, burn half as long. The way things had happened was undoubtedly for the best. Let the circumstances snuff what they had while it was still blazing hot, and skip the inevitable, disappointing fizzle altogether. “She’s safe. That’s all I care about.”
“It’s weird, seeing you hung up on a chick.”
“After ten years,” Vince said, meeting Casey’s eyes, “seeing me period must be weird.”
“Low blow.”
Vince smiled. Yeah, it was a low blow. Plus, Casey was right. It was weird—for Vince to be attached to anybody. The development hadn’t been lost on Nita or Miah or Raina, either, or anybody around here who knew him at all.
He changed the subject. “You ever gonna tell me what it is you’ve been up to—”
He paused at the sound of tires grinding gravel, turned to look out the window above the sink. An unfamiliar blue sedan had pulled up along the shoulder, dust drifting in the wake of the quick stop.
“Who the fuck . . . ?” Vince was already palming his gun and stepping back from the window, but the driver’s-side door slammed and there she was. “Jesus, it’s Kim.” The fuck? His chest felt all twingey and tight as he imagined her saying, Screw it, to her flight, turning right around and defying him. Coming back to him. That made him all mad and happy at once.
“Tell a man, why don’t you?” he muttered, watching her slip out of view to head for the steps at a jog.
He met her at the door, pushing it wide. “Couldn’t stay away, could—”
“It’s Tremblay,” she said, breathless. “Sheriff Tremblay is one of the men I saw.”
Vince just blinked.
“No shitting way,” Case said from behind him.
“I saw him on the news, at the airport.” Her eyes darted between the two of them. “It’s him. I’m positive it’s him. He’s the one who seemed less convinced that I hadn’t overheard them.”
Vince put a hand to her shoulder, too numb to even register the contact. “Fuck. I gotta sit down.” He staggered to a chair and sat there for a moment, utterly blank. The name seemed to float before him, meaningless, a load of letters stamped on his brain but making no sense. Tremblay . . . The man Vince had planned to go to today, to demand a new investigation. Take what he knew and hand it over to one of the people involved. A man who’d known the details of Alex’s murder. The man he’d gone to about Alex in the first place. The sheriff, all along?
“That actually makes sense,” Casey said, a little quicker than Vince at piecing it all together. “He was Alex’s coroner, probably. So even if shit was suspicious, he’s the only one who’d know it.”
Vince nodded, another fragment slotting into the whole. “He didn’t tell me the wrong site by mistake. Alex did go to someone in the department about what he saw.” Straight to the top, in fact. And with that, the blankness was gone, molten anger pumping through him. “All that bull he fed me, about Alex being upset about getting benched, and about how he was going to send somebody down there, how Alex had never reported it . . .” He stood, his chair scooting back with a squeal. “Motherfucker.”
“Why would he do that?” Casey asked, but Vince couldn’t give a shit about the why of it. That was no room for why with his entire being consumed with a writhing desire for vengeance. He’d been lied to and misled—that burned in itself. But to realize Tremblay had known about this, helped cover it up . . . maybe even done the deed himself? The world went bloodred.
“The why of it can wait,” he said, mustering calm. Reason would get its turn once instinct was done driving. He paced, his body itching to be moving. Doing.
“What are you thinking?” Kim asked. “Who’s the best person to go to? Straight to the feds?”
There was only one face Vince wanted to lay his eyes on right now. “Tremblay. We go to Tremblay.”
She looked scared at that. “And do what?”
“Confront him with everything we know. In his office, with as many witnesses as possible.”
Casey nodded, looking eager for the scene.
Kim shook her head. “If you think he’s involved, you should go higher up.”
“And if you think this shit isn’t personal, you’re dead wrong.”
“Get Duncan Welch to call the feds, like you planned,” Kim said, nearly begging.
He took a second to consider it, suspecting she was right. “Fine. But I’m still going down to see Tremblay. I’ve got questions of my own I want answered.”
She pursed her lips, but held in whatever protest she had.
“And I’m still coming,” Casey said.
Vince nodded. “You’re in charge of keeping me from losing my shit when I lay eyes on that fucker. And Miah and Raina—they deserve the chance to come. We were all Alex’s friends. Hell, I’ll see if Welch is willing to tag along, and admit to the snooping he did.”
His brother nodded again. “You’ve got his number. I’ll call the other two.”
“Good. And get Nita over here.”
Casey was already heading for the door with his phone to his ear. “Raina. You up?”
As the screen door banged shut and his brother’s voice faded, Vince looked to Kim. She’d calmed some, the adrenaline from what must’ve been a frantic drive seeming to have drained away, leaving her shell-shocked.
“I left you a message,” she said. “I guess you didn’t get it.”
“Sorry. Didn’t even hear my phone—there’s a big patch with no signal between Elko and here.”
She nodded absently. “I figured.”
“Hey.” He waited until she sought his eyes, her blue ones dazed. “C’mere.” He gathered her into his arms. All the sharp feelings seemed to dull, the world finally slowing enough for him to catch his breath.
“Hi,” she said, sounding scared.
“You came back,” Vince mumbled. He touched her hair. He always seemed to do that when she had him feeling something soft and unfamiliar—touched her hair. It felt like her presence, her return—improbable somehow, a reality he held in his hands as truly as he’d feared it had slipped through his fingers.
She nodded, stepping back a pace to meet his eyes. “I told you I would. It just wound up happening a lot sooner than I expected. And a lot more dramatically.”
Yeah, this so didn’t look like what he might have pictured, either. He wasn’t standing beside the baggage claim at Elko Airport, holding a load of roses, for one. But there was one part of the scene that could still happen. He leaned in and kissed her. Light and soft to start, but the closer he felt to her, the more desperate and needy the contact grew. He tasted her deeply, the kiss full of confusion and lust and fear and relief, too many things. Enough emotion to smother the life out of him, and yet he felt so fucking alive from it. High. Rattled. Euphoric. If shit weren’t so thoroughly fucked-up, he’d have dragged her to his room and hashed t
hese too-many feelings out between their bodies.
He moved his mouth to her temple. “You came back,” he said again, so quietly he was surprised she heard him.
“I came back for you . . . but I’m staying for me.” Her words were hot against his throat. “I’m meant to be here, for reasons deeper than what your mom foresaw. Deeper than what you and I found together in bed, even.”
Deep as that red rock. “Amen.”
She smiled weakly as Vince pulled away. “You taste like peanut butter.”
“And you smell like heaven. And when this shit’s taken care of, I’m gonna fuck the holy hell out of you.”
“All the more reason for you to be careful,” she whispered, “and to come back in one piece.”
“We’re marching ourselves into the Sheriff’s Department headquarters. Unless it’s some force-wide conspiracy, we’ll be in the company of the best witnesses possible.”
“Just don’t rush in there all threatening, and give him any reason to, like, shoot you in self-defense or—”
He took her face in his palms. “Chill. We’ll be smart. Four or five of us are going in. My .45 stays stashed in my bike.”
“Why bring it at all?”
“If we wind up going out to the mine, I’ll feel better knowing it’s there.”
She looked worried, and he stroked her shoulders.
“Let a man have his security blanket, okay?”
“Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”
“Going in the first place is probably stupid, but I need to look that motherfucker in the face, demand to know what his role was in all this. But I promise I’ll let the feds take it from there, once they show.” Vince said this even though his hatred would prefer to simply pistol-whip a confession out of the cocksucker. Speaking of which. He strode to the counter and took his Colt out for a quick once-over. Through the window, he spied Nita and Casey leaving her house and heading toward the Grossiers’.
“I’ll come, too,” Kim said suddenly.
Vince snapped the magazine back into place. “The fuck you will.”
“Raina’s going.”
He turned to meet her gaze squarely as he tucked the gun in its holster. “You want to know why Raina’s welcome to come and you’re not? Why, really?”
She squared her narrow shoulders. “Yes.”
“Because I’m not in fucking love with Raina. That’s why.” He jerked his jacket on. “Because I think maybe I’m in love with you, so there’s no fucking way I’m letting you follow me into the same building with a psychopath. Okay?”
Her eyes were round, her expression so stoned with surprise, he’d have laughed under different circumstances. She seemed to shake herself out of it a moment later, looking cross as she locked her arms over her chest.
“You’re not taking that gun.” She nodded to the holster. “Not if you’re marching into the Sheriff’s Department with feds on the way. I know you’re pissed, but you’re also on parole. Don’t be an idiot.”
He considered it, and had to admit she was right on that one, much as he hated getting told what to do, and naked as he felt, shrugging out of the leather straps. He strode to the pantry to lock it in the safe. Turning back to Kim, he asked, “Happy?”
“Barely.”
“To be continued,” he said, and gave her chin a little pinch before heading for the door. “Stay with Nita until I get back.”
“Call me the second you know anything,” she called. “And if you get hurt, I’ll fucking kill you.”
He shoved the door wide and shouted back, “Love you, too.”
Chapter 26
“Miah’s meeting us at Benji’s,” Casey said as Vince reached the road. “Raina’s home, but she wants to hear more before she agrees to come.”
Vince nodded as he reached his bike, phone pressed to his ear. He listened as the dial tone hummed.
Welch’s cool voice came through the line. “Mr. Grossier.”
“Where you at?”
“I’m at the Wild Horse Diner, home of the Cowboy Breakfast Bonanza. Why do you—”
“I’ll meet you there in two minutes,” Vince said, swinging a leg over his bike.
“I have a meeting in half an hour that—”
“Not anymore you don’t. I need you for something way more important.”
“May I ask—”
“I’ll tell you when I see you,” Vince said, kicking the bike into life with a roar. He shouted, “Stay where you are,” then ended the call. “Let’s go,” he mouthed to Casey.
His brother nodded and they headed into town. Paused at the traffic light, he told Casey, “Go fill Miah and Raina in. I’ll get Welch.” Casey turned into the bar’s lot, and Vince went on to the diner.
Welch was sitting at the counter, eating one of those rubbery, yolkless monstrosities that dared to call themselves an omelet, a fancy tea bag wrapper resting on his saucer. He looked up from his phone as Vince’s shadow fell across his plate, knife and fork going still in his hands.
“Come to interrupt me in person?”
Vince sat on the next stool. “Kim IDed one of the men she overheard.”
Welch’s dry expression turned grave, and he set the utensils down neatly. “David Levins?”
Vince shook his head, and under his breath he said, “Chuck Tremblay.”
Those eerie gray eyes grew wide. “The sheriff?” Welch mouthed the word.
“Yeah. She saw him on the news, on her way out of town. Says she has no doubt, and thinking about it, neither do I. Explains why he told me the wrong site, and since he acted as Alex’s coroner . . .”
Realization passed across Welch’s face like a cold breeze.
“Me, my brother, Miah, and Raina are going to the department right now, to confront him. Maybe get some officers to come down to the mine and take a look at the shady shit that happened in there. I need you to call the feds. And I want you to come with us. I want your scheming brain on my side, knowing the right way to word shit. Any fines you get for admitting to trespassing, I’ll pay them.”
“I hope you realize I could get sacked for this. I abused my position to do the snooping I did.”
Vince shrugged. “If they fire you, you can count yourself lucky you’re no longer working for a company that’d punish you for stopping a criminal.”
Welch seemed to give the situation a minute’s serious consideration, and while he did, Vince flagged down the waitress and asked for a cup of coffee. He tossed a dollar on the counter and drained the mug in one searing gulp.
“So you’re in?” he demanded.
Welch nodded once, eyes on his eggs. “Yes. Of course.”
“Good. I’ll be honest,” Vince said. “I go in there and say what it is I’m bound to, I’ll fuck everything up. But you—you’re smooth. And you’re a lawyer, and you work for a company whose business is wrapped up in this scandal. Plus, you’re way smarter than me. And you know how to say stuff, to keep your nose as clean as possible. I’m gonna ask you to do that for me.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Good enough.”
Vince waited while Welch paid for his unfinished eggs; then they exited together. “Head for the Sheriff’s Department, but don’t go in until we’re all there.”
Welch reached into his jacket pocket and came out with a little orange bottle. He knocked two white pills into his palm and swallowed them dry.
Vince blinked. “You weren’t kidding about that prescription.”
Welch stashed the bottle. “Raina’s coming, you said?”
He nodded. “Told Case to let her know about it, anyhow. She’s invited.”
“I suppose her hands are clean,” Welch said thoughtfully. “She’s the only one of us who hasn’t been sticking her nose in, around the sites.”
“Whether it’s smart or not, it’s her right to choose to come or not. Alex was her friend. She grew up with him, same as me and Miah and Casey.”
He didn’t look pleased.
&n
bsp; Vince had to smirk. “Don’t waste your breath worrying about Raina. If there’s one thing she can’t stand, it’s a man deciding what’s best for her.” With that, he headed for his bike.
Welch unlocked the Mercedes. “I’m calling the feds on the way.”
Vince nodded.
Welch exited in the direction of Railroad Avenue while Vince circled back past the bar. Casey, Miah, and Raina were standing out front by the bikes in the otherwise-empty lot, and Vince waved his arm, telling them to follow.
The Brush County Sheriff’s Department headquarters were a two-story stucco building nestled before the foothills, a half mile past the motel. Vince parked next to Welch, who was standing beside his car, jacket abandoned, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He had his phone to his ear and his little notepad sitting on his hood.
“Yes,” he told the receiver. “As far as I know . . . Yes, that’s brilliant. Please do.” He pushed a button and pocketed his phone.
“They on their way?” Vince asked.
“Hardly. I gave them the gist—that I suspect Sheriff Tremblay and unknown actors within Virgin River Contracting are involved in a possible murder and cover-up. Sounds like they need to confirm some things and make arrangements, but the wheels are in motion. They’re going to call back. And I’ve been instructed to dissuade you from confronting the suspect.”
“Fat f—”
“Fucking chance,” Welch finished for him. “Yes, I imagined you’d say as much. Shall we carry on?”
Vince spotted Tremblay’s cruiser. He knew it by its plate—he’d been dodging those digits for fifteen years, now. Good—better the man was here rather than the five of them all sitting around the lobby, waiting for his return and risking him getting tipped off about whatever the feds were planning. Surprise was essential.
Just picturing the fucker’s face had Vince’s fists curling and his blood pressure rising. Thank Christ Kim had made him leave his piece at home; if he hadn’t, he could imagine straight-up losing his shit the second he locked eyes with Tremblay.