“On the other hand, there are a few less-than-friendly faces, too. A couple detectives from the sheriff’s department. I’m afraid they get first crack at you. They’d have liked to kick me out, but they couldn’t quite manage it. I even managed to squeeze in while they interviewed Tim.”
“Thanks. I guess.”
“You guess?”
“I guess I have to admit he’s grown up now.”
“Is that so hard?”
Suddenly, with Ethan by her side, it wasn’t. Tim would always be her little brother, but he’d shown himself more than capable of holding his own under the worst possible circumstances. And she’d found someone else she trusted. Now, to find a way to tell him so.
“While we were in the cabin, I wanted to tell him not to worry, that you were coming, but I couldn’t let Pike realize we had a plan. He—Tim—he did great, even without the reassurance.”
“Of course he did. You raised him.” Ethan winked at her. “A kick-ass sister like you wouldn’t put up with anything less. He did great on his interview, too. Stayed really cool. Of course, that could have been the morphine. Now, let me go get TJ and Jake, along with the detectives, and we’ll get yours over with.”
Lucy thought about objecting, about telling him she could handle herself without the backup, but she wasn’t at all sure it would be true. Her emotions careened from one point to another, and she didn’t know how she’d deal with an interrogation.
“I’ll just pop out and tell them they can come in, okay? Better to get this done and behind you.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
Ethan grabbed a pair of crutches and swung himself out of the room. He returned a few minutes later with TJ, Jake, a dark-haired stranger, and a man who introduced himself as Johnny Wilson, acting sheriff.
“Lucy,” Johnny nodded at her. “We have Sheriff Pike in custody, and we have your brother’s statement about what happened inside the cabin. But I’d like to get the details from you.”
“Sure.”
She relayed the story, starting with the phone call she’d received while at the police station. For the most part, Johnny let her talk, interrupting only occasionally for clarification. She left out Pike’s references to his actions in high school. Tim wouldn’t have understood what Pike was talking about, so he probably would have skipped that part of his account as well. Besides, her high school experiences had no bearing on either her mother’s murder or Pike’s killing spree.
“So you never suspected it was Sheriff Pike on the phone?” Johnny asked.
“No. I had no reason to.” She looked directly at Johnny, avoiding TJ and Ethan, who knew about her history with Pike.
Johnny and his sidekick left, and an awkward silence filled the room. Ethan broke it.
“Why did you tell him you had no reason to suspect Pike? After what he did to you in high school—”
“TJ and I had talked about him. She looked at his alibis.”
“No.” A frown creased TJ’s forehead. “We talked about Drew. Not Billy. I saw Drew stuff that note into your locker back then. Saw him downstairs waiting for you. I didn’t even know Billy was involved. I should have, seeing how inseparable they were, but it never occurred to me.”
Jake glared at TJ and swore. “All this could have been avoided! All of it! You call yourself a detective? Hell, you call yourself a friend?”
“Jake! Lay off!” But Lucy’s warning came too late. TJ was gone.
“What’s the matter with you?” For all his faults, Lucy had never seen Jake go off half-cocked.
“You could have been killed, Luce, and all because she let you believe she’d checked into Pike’s alibi when she hadn’t.”
“It was a misunderstanding.” Lucy fought to remember TJ’s exact words. “She said she’d looked into ‘him.’ I thought she meant Pike, but she was talking about her brother. She was a little kid the first time she came to my rescue. If you blame her, you have to blame me, too. I should have found out exactly what she remembered, but that part of my past is embarrassing, and I don’t like talking about it.”
“Fine. You both acted like idiots.”
“Maybe so. But it’s over. And you don’t get to criticize, anyway.” She fixed Jake with the sternest expression she could manage from her prone position. “Now, go find TJ and apologize.”
“You’re a hard woman, Lucy Caldwell.”
“Just get.” With a nod at her and Ethan, Jake got.
Ethan stroked her hair back from her face. “How you holding up? It can’t have been easy telling strangers about the mayor being your father.”
Lucy shook her head. “He wasn’t my father. He contributed half my genes, and he gave my mother money, maybe even bought her that house, but none of that makes him a father. Imagine leaving me money in his will, as if that would make up for the treatment he allowed my mother and us to face all those years. What she said to Megan’s brother about following her heart . . . I guess she loved him. It’s probably why she stayed here, even though he would never acknowledge her. Us.”
“Love is complicated.”
Lucy waited for Ethan to elaborate, but he didn’t. “I hated this town, you know. Hated everyone in it. And yet, I believed what they said, too. I studied her death, and how her life might have caused it, but I never gave a single thought to how she got so lost. Not until I came back.”
“It doesn’t sound as if she had a great childhood. And then she fell for the wrong man. But nothing you’ve ever said has led me to believe she was a bad person.”
“She wasn’t. And somewhere along the line, I forgot that.” The tears were dripping down her face again, and Lucy swiped at them.
“I’m a wreck.”
“Nah. Just a fender bender. You ready to see the rest of your fans?”
“Not yet.” She patted the edge of her bed, and he maneuvered himself so he could sit, his bad leg propped on the chair. “We’ve talked about me, about Tim, about Billy Pike, but what about you?”
“As you can see, I’m fine.”
“What about your job? How long’s your knee going to have to be stabilized? Will you need more surgery?”
“I haven’t really talked to anyone about the job. I assume I get to keep it for three months, until my term’s up. They’ll have a damned hard time justifying getting rid of me before that, what with Eric, Jed, and Billy all going down on my watch. After that, the deputy mayor will appoint someone new.”
“You don’t think he’ll ask you to stay on?”
“Whether he asks or not, I won’t.”
“Really?”
“No.” He met her eyes, and she felt the weight of his words. “I’ve had time to think. You were right about what my old lieutenant said being wrong. I would never take another job as a narcotics cop, or even one where I was exposed to that kind of temptation regularly, but I can handle myself on a day-to-day basis. I can carry a gun. I can do what needs doing.
“In three months’ time, when my contract with the town of Dobbs Hollow is up, I’m going to see about getting a PI license. I can’t go back to the Houston PD, but investigation is what I do. It’s who I am.”
He took a deep breath. “Thing is, my contacts for that stuff are all in Houston. I could move, but I’d have to start over. I’d do it, though, if—”
“If?” She could hardly breathe.
“Lucy, you said I’d leave you one day because I didn’t need you. You were wrong. I do. I need you because you believed in me even when I didn’t, and because you make me stronger. You make me better. But you need me, too. Not just to feed you and make sure you come up for air when you’re working too hard, but because I love you.”
“You do?” The words came out on a strangled, choking breath. She sucked in another to finally, finally tell him she loved him, too, but he was still talking.
“Yeah, I do.
And I’m not sure anyone else ever has, not properly, not without you feeling like you had to take care of them, or that you owed them. So, here’s the thing: it will be harder for me to get started in my PI business if I don’t go back to Houston, but I’ll move to Dallas instead, if you ask me to. And not because you feel like you should. Just because you want me to.”
The tears started again, and she started to wipe them away, only to realize that at some point he’d taken her good hand.
“I won’t ask you to do that.” His grip and his expression tightened. He’d misunderstood her words. “Ethan, I can work anywhere. Tim’s in college. He’s also old enough to decide for himself where he lives.” She gulped in a huge breath. “I love you. When I was in the cabin, I wished I had told you. I can move to Houston a lot more easily than you can to Dallas. If you really want me to.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, swinging his leg around so he could lie next to her on the bed and pulling her close with great care. “I really want.”
She closed her eyes and snuggled into the heat of his body. Everyone else would have to wait. For once, she was going to take what she wanted. She felt the vibration of Ethan’s chest beneath her ear and realized he was humming. She fell asleep, teary-eyed, to the tune of “If Ever I Would Leave You” from Camelot.
• • •
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
WHAT YOU HOLD in your hands is not my own work, or at least not mine alone. Because it was first acquired and published by Penguin, it has been through the hands of extra editors, extra copy editors, extra proofreaders.
First, I have to thank my agent Jessica Faust, who took me on when I was writing cozy mysteries and stuck with me despite the rocky road to publication. My first editor, Theresa Stevens, helped shape everything you see in this book. Leis Pederson, my editor at Penguin, continued the refinements. My copy editor there, Andy Ball, caught any mistakes that might have slipped through the cracks. And finally, when the Leis left Penguin and the book came back to me, Lynda Ryba proofed it for me again, Keith Snyder made it look beautiful, and Carrie Devine gave it a fabulous cover.
My companions at the Women of Mystery blog, my Sisters in Crime chapter-mates, and the many good women of RWA who read and commented and helped me with research deserve more kudos than I could possibly give them. Writing organizations can help keep you sane when the publishing world is making you crazy.
Clare Toohey, my commuting partner, helped hash out plot points time after time, and my writing sprints pal K.M. Jackson kept pushing me onward. I owe them both my gratitude for keeping me on target.
And last, but definitely not least, I must thank my husband, who takes care of everything when I am under deadline…and sometimes even when I am not. My own, private hero.
I am sure I have left people out, and I apologize profoundly for doing so. If I included everyone who deserves to be thanked, the acknowledgements would be longer than the book.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LAURA K. CURTIS gave up a life writing dry academic papers for writing decidedly less dry short crime stories and novel-length romantic suspense and contemporary romance. A member of RWA, MWA, ITW, and Sisters in Crime, she has trouble settling into one genre. She has published four romantic suspense novels (Twisted, 2013; Lost, 2014; Echoes, 2015; and Mind Games, 2015), two contemporary romance novels (Toying With His Affections, 2014; Gaming the System, 2015), and a host of short stories, many with a supernatural bent.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to persons living or dead, business establishments, or events is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 Laura Kramarsky
Cover copyright © 2017 Carrie Devine/Seductive Musings
Cover image Copyright © knape / istock.com
Interior design: Typeflow
All rights reserved. The scanning, uploading, or electronic sharing of any part of this book (other than for review purposes) without the permission of the author constitutes unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.
This book was originally published by InterMix in November, 2013
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