by LENA DIAZ,
Chris was so surprised by the chief’s gesture that he didn’t have the heart to tell him that in addition to the weapons in his truck, he’d had Donna and Max both load up the duffel with plenty of ammo along with the clothing they’d gotten from Julie’s and Chris’s houses. At the time he’d assumed they’d end up in a hotel, perhaps one town over. But, as hot as this case was getting, the mountains sounded like a far better plan.
“Yes, sir,” he finally said. “Thank you, Chief.”
“For what? When the ADA calls asking where Mrs. Webb is, I don’t know nothing. You can’t thank me if I didn’t do anything. You got me?”
“Yes, sir. I got you.” He glanced at Max. “Keep working those angles we talked about. I’ll call you later.”
Max grinned. “You and Dillon always were the favorites. I’d be out on my ass if I pulled a stunt like this.”
“You may still be if you don’t get back in that station and follow up on those leads.” The chief glared at both of them before whirling around and stalking back toward the front doors.
“Stay off the main roads as much as possible when you head out of here,” Max warned. “I heard Alan Webb’s family is hot over his death and might pay us a visit soon.”
“When did you hear that?”
“A few minutes ago. One of my contacts warned me.”
“You sure have a lot of contacts. Maybe we need to share some of them sometime.”
“Nope. They’re all mine.” He gave Chris a jaunty salute and closed the door.
Chris checked Julie once more, then backed out of the space and took off down the road toward one of the lower peaks in the Smoky mountain range. There was a hunting cabin he and Dillon used up there during deer season. It was the perfect spot to let Julie process everything. And it also had a satellite dish, which meant that Chris could continue helping with the investigation, plus keep a tab on the efforts to locate the driver of that Charger, Brian Henson.
Chapter Eighteen
Julie rolled over in the soft bed, sighing at the fresh, clean smell of the sheets. The bed was ridiculously comfortable. The pillows fluffy, down filled. Wait, her down-filled pillows were still in boxes. Weren’t they?
She gasped and bolted upright in bed. Clutching the covers to her chest, she scanned the room. A lamp was on beside the bed, casting a soft yellow glow. The walls were polished, a honey gold, and the floor beside the bed was knotty pine. Other than the lamp, the nightstand it sat on and the bed, there was nothing else. Not even a chest or dresser. None of it looked familiar. So where was she? And how had she gotten here?
“Don’t panic. You’re safe.”
She let out a squeak of surprise, then flushed at the embarrassing sound when she recognized Chris standing in the doorway.
“Are we back at Harmony Haven?” she asked. “I don’t recognize the bedroom.”
“I wanted you to have some rest, some peace and quiet. So I drove us to a cabin in the mountains.”
He waved his hand to encompass the room. “The rest of the place is a bit more modern, not quite this rustic. But this is the only bedroom on the first floor and I wanted you close by so I’d hear you if you woke up in a panic. You were pretty much out of it. I wasn’t sure how much you’d remember of the drive up here.”
She didn’t remember any of it.
She blew out a long breath and shoved her hair back. A quick look down confirmed that she was still dressed in the white blouse and khaki pants that she’d been in after her shower in Chief Thornton’s office. Chris must have taken her here after leaving the police station. So why couldn’t she remember any of that?
All of the memories of the last confrontation in the chief’s office suddenly flooded back. She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting down the panic she’d felt earlier.
He killed them.
Alan, her husband, had killed her family.
And then he’d built a life—with her.
“It gets better.”
Her eyes flew open. He’d stepped beside the bed, still dressed in the jeans and casual shirt he’d changed into after his shower. The words he’d just said sat like stones in her stomach.
“What do you mean, it gets better? Your wife murdered your family, too?”
He winced, making her regret her sarcasm. She drew a deep breath, trying to calm down.
“Not exactly,” he said. “I’ve never been married. I do know what it’s like to lose someone you love. But what you’re going through right now is way worse than anything I’ve been through. I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry, I really am.”
He turned as if to leave.
“No, wait. Please.”
He gave her a questioning look.
She shifted in the bed, making room beside her. “Tell me about whoever you loved, and lost. Maybe...maybe it will help. Both of us.”
He slowly sat down, facing her. “I’ve never talked about it with anyone else.”
“Never?”
“No. I couldn’t. I was too busy trying to be there for my best friend, to help him face his own grief. Announcing that the love of my life had just been killed in a car accident—when I’d never even told him about her—wouldn’t have helped him. So I kept it inside. As the years went by, it got easier to just never talk about it.”
“Your best friend? Isn’t Dillon your best friend?”
“Yes.”
“Then his grief—it was for the woman he named his farm after, his sister?”
“One and the same.”
“That’s the woman you loved and lost?”
He chuckled. “I loved Harmony, but not romantically. She was still a kid when she died, six years younger than Dillon and me.” His smile faded. “But, yes, Harmony died back home, in Destiny, when Dillon and I were both away at college—separate colleges. The woman I loved, Sherry, was killed a week before Harmony. I stayed for Sherry’s funeral, and to pull myself together enough to come home and tell my family and friends about her. Only, once I got here, I found out about Harmony. And Dillon was already home, and devastated.”
He shook his head. “If I’d told him my own sorry tale he’d have tried to be there for me. It wouldn’t have been right. I’d only been in love with Sherry for a few months. Dillon had lost his baby sister, a whole lifetime of memories. It wasn’t the same.”
Her heart ached for the loss Chris had suffered and for how he’d lived with it all of these years, keeping it inside. She reached for his hand and clasped it in both of hers.
“I’m so sorry, Chris. You shouldn’t have had to bear that pain alone.”
Slowly, ever so slowly, he leaned in toward her and placed the softest, sweetest kiss against her lips before pulling back.
“And you shouldn’t have to bear your pain alone. That’s why I brought you here, Julie. You’ve lost so much. Suffered an enormous amount of trauma, found out devastating secrets, all in a very short amount of time. I want you to know that you’re safe here and I won’t badger you with any more questions. We’ll stay on the mountain until you’re ready to come down. And in the meantime, my teammates will figure the rest of it out. We...they...will find out who’s after you. And they’ll stop him. I can’t take away the pain you feel about what we believe happened to your family. But I can take away some of the stress, or at least try. Do you need anything? Are you hungry?”
“What I need right now is to feel normal. I don’t want to talk about the case or my past or any of this. Just...talk to me, for a few minutes. About something, anything, other than the investigation.”
He cocked his head, a half smile playing around his lips. “Where did you grow up? Nashville?”
She nodded.
“Ever been to the Smoky Mountains before?”
“Hasn’t everybody? I’ve ridden on the three-story
go-kart tracks in Pigeon Forge, seen Dolly Parton perform in Dollywood, gone to the stores in downtown Gatlinburg.”
He grinned. “Typical tourist. You think you’ve seen everything, when you haven’t seen anything.” He stood. “Come on.”
She flipped the covers back and took his hand.
He tugged her through an archway that she had assumed led to a closet. Then he unlocked and opened a door at the end. She could see blue sky and the dark green leaves of towering trees beyond.
“Wait, my shoes—”
“You don’t need them.”
“Easy for you to say when you’re wearing shoes.”
He pulled her through the doorway onto a balcony. She barely noticed the door closing behind them. Her mouth dropped open as she stared at the incredible beauty that stretched as far as she could see. Tall green pine and oak trees framed the vista to the left and the right, but directly below them the mountain steeply dropped away. A deep green valley stretched out below, and beyond that, going on for miles and miles were the blue-gray silhouettes of the Great Smoky Mountains. Little puffs of white mist rose in dozens of places, as if someone was making smoke signals. All of it combined to create a soft, beautiful haze of color and “smoke.” It was as if an artist had painted the mountains, then softened everything with a light color wash.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “I can’t believe I’ve never come up into the mountains before, not like this.”
“The best places in the Smokies are the ones the tourists don’t know about, the little turnoffs that lead deep into the forest. There are hundreds of waterfalls all through the mountains, pristine, looking as if no one has touched them or even seen them for thousands of years. It’s all unspoiled beauty. Paradise.”
He leaned past her, pointing down toward the valley below. “Look,” he whispered, “to the right, just coming out of the tree line.”
She watched in awe as a group of three deer emerged from the forest, a doe with two fawns. The mother sniffed the air, her large ears flicking back and forth as she scanned for signs of danger. Her young pranced around her on wobbly legs, oblivious to how hard their mother worked to keep them safe. A yellow butterfly rose and dipped around them, much to the delight of the fawns, who scampered after it.
“They’re so...innocent...and happy. They’re gorgeous,” she said, keeping her voice low, not sure if it would carry down to the deer and scare them away.
He gave her a nod of approval. They stood beside each other until the deer disappeared, until the sun began to sink behind the mountains. Tiny little lights blinked on and off down in the valley, close to the tree line.
She laughed with delight. “Fireflies. I haven’t seen those since I was a little girl.”
A half smile played around his mouth. “They’ve always been here. You just have to know where to look.”
“You grew up here?” She waved her hand to encompass the incredible vista surrounding them. “With all of this?”
He nodded. “Tennessee, the real Tennessee, the one the tourists never stop long enough to appreciate, is heaven on earth. I can’t imagine any place more beautiful. I left for a few years to go to college, see a bit of the world. But my heart was always here. No matter where I go, I’ll always come back to Destiny.”
“You haven’t mentioned a family.” As soon as she said it, she worried that she might have stumbled into bad territory, that he might have memories in his past he’d like to forget, like she did. But the smile on his face told her otherwise. Family wasn’t a bad memory for him. The love shining out of his eyes told her that, even without the smile.
“I reckon I’m related to half the people on this mountain,” he teased. “I can’t go anywhere without running into a second or third cousin, twice removed. And that’s on top of my parents and three brothers. At church the Downings take up three pews. And we usually get together a couple of times a month at someone’s house—potluck, everyone brings a dish. We roast marshmallows over an outdoor fire pit, tell ghost stories, swap lies about who caught the biggest fish last.”
His smile faded as he looked at her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gushed like that.”
She shook her head. “Don’t apologize. I asked. And I love hearing about your family, about your life out here. It sounds...wonderful. Tell me more.”
The moon was high in the sky and the stars burning bright by the time they retreated inside, driven in by the no-see-ums, gnats and other flying bugs that descended onto the balcony, attracted by their presence.
Chris stopped beside her bed and gave her a soft kiss on her forehead. “You have to be starving by now. Are you a carnivore or one of those vegan people?” He shuddered, as if not eating meat was a fate worse than death.
“I can eat a steak with the best of them,” she reassured him. “But I’m not hungry just yet. I think I’ll just lie down a little bit longer, if that’s okay.”
“Of course. I’ll be in the next room, just a knock on the wall away.”
He started to turn away, but she tugged his hand, keeping him there. His brows raised in question.
She stood on her tiptoes and reached up and cupped his handsome face in her hands. The aching need she’d felt for him back in the chief’s office, when they’d shared that soul-shattering kiss, was nothing compared to the way her heart yearned for him now.
There was something so adorable about this man, something that called out to her in every way. He was so kind, took such joy in the world around him. Her bruised and battered soul, even with everything still going on, seemed to feel better, to heal just a little bit more, every time she was around him. She couldn’t just let him leave without knowing what he meant to her at this moment. Or how amazing it was to meet a man who put everyone else first, no matter what. That kind of selflessness was rare, a true gift, to be treasured, cherished.
She angled her lips up toward him, waiting, hoping. He was too tall for her to reach unless he wanted this, too. His eyelids dropped to half-mast, need and hunger reflected in his eyes as he leaned down and pressed his lips against hers.
But this was her kiss. She wanted to lead, and he let her. She kissed him, softly, gently, as he’d kissed her back at the station. She poured all the sweetness into her kiss, the raw, new emotions she felt for him but couldn’t yet define. She tried to show him that she cared, that he mattered to her, so much that it confused her. All she knew was that he’d saved her life, but he was also saving her soul.
When he would have deepened the kiss, it nearly killed her to pull away. But she wasn’t ready for more, not yet. She needed to think and rest and try to make sense of things.
The question was there in his eyes. She fanned her fingers over his cheeks, smiling up at him.
“I wasn’t ready for you,” she whispered. “You’re a surprise. My heart...” She shook her head and smoothed her fingers across his shirt. “Thank you.”
The poor man looked just as confused as she felt.
“Thank you for saving me, several times,” she said. “Thank you for being there for me no matter what, for sharing the joy of your childhood, your family, your love for this mountain. But most of all, thank you for sharing your pain. I’m so sorry that you lost someone you loved. But it means more than you can possibly know that you shared that with me. It gives me hope that I can work through my own losses, move on and be...happy...one day. So, thank you.”
She kissed him again, then dropped her hands and got into bed. She pulled the covers up to her chin. “I really am tired. I think everything that’s happened has exhausted me. I’ll just lie here awhile longer, okay?”
He looked like he wanted to say something, then sighed and changed his mind about whatever it was.
“I’ll be in the next room if you need anything.” He waved toward a closed door beside the nightstand. “That’s the bathroom. The ba
g that Donna packed for you is in there.”
After he left and pulled the door closed, she shut her eyes. All of his talk about family and happy times had lifted her up, but it also had her thinking about her own family, and feeling like a traitor for laughing and smiling after what had happened to them.
She tried to remember her family the way they’d been before her mother’s alleged overdose, before her father supposedly shot himself, before Naomi’s mysterious illness. And, mostly, she just tried to remember her family before Alan Webb injected himself into their lives and destroyed them all.
* * *
CHRIS HAD BEEN standing over the cabin’s kitchen table for about an hour now, moving papers back and forth, like pieces of a puzzle, but so far, he wasn’t able to see the big picture.
The background information was pouring in, thanks to the emails and phone calls from his team. But, no matter how he looked at everything or how he classified it into various lists, he wasn’t seeing the connections that he needed to make.
He straightened and rubbed the back of his neck. It looked like the only thing to come out of tonight’s research session was an aching back and a crick in his neck.
The sound of feet padding across the carpet had him turning around to see Julie coming toward him. She’d changed into a tank top and shorts, revealing a mouthwatering amount of smooth, pale skin. Normally he was all about eyes, lips and curves. But Julie’s legs were incredible and had him picturing how they’d feel wrapped around his waist while he—
“Turn around,” she said. “And sit. I can help you with that stiff neck you were rubbing.”
Since he didn’t think he could speak right now without his tongue lolling out, he decided to do what she said. He sat. The moment he did, she slid her hands onto his shoulders and began rubbing and kneading them in slow circles, working out the tension that had coiled in his muscles without him even realizing it.
When she moved her hands to his neck and began massaging him again, his head dropped toward his chest and he let out a groan of pure ecstasy.