* * *
There were cops everywhere.
Cops. It looked like every uniformed officer in town was running around and he caught sight of Lieutenant Shaw Kramer standing just the right of the doorway, his dark face grim, his grizzled gray head bowed as he talked onto his phone.
Caine Yoder had about as much use for cops as he had for preachers, doctors and other so-called trustworthy souls.
He didn’t trust them any further than he could throw them.
There were very, very few people he trusted in this life.
And one of them lived inside that house.
No, Caine didn’t have much use for Max Shepherd, but he did trust the old man, and his heart hammered as he strode across the manicured lawn. Over the years, Max hadn’t been able to keep up with the yard the way he liked. So Caine had done it.
Once Max had tried to pay him for it.
Caine had ripped the check into shreds, left the pieces fluttering in the wind as he walked off.
He had no words he wanted to offer the man, and Caine wouldn’t forgive him for a lot of things.
But Caine knew the old man had tried to help.
And now …
Something inside Caine died a little as a couple of the uniformed officers turned to look at him.
“What’s going on here?” he asked, pasting that blank, polite smile on his face. It had been the mask he’d hidden behind for twenty years now.
Not a soul had ever seen past it.
But then again, nobody had ever really tried.
* * *
As much as he hadn’t wanted to spend the morning dealing with Layla Chalmers, this was even worse.
He’d just been sitting down to start going over her statement when Dispatch put through the call from Kramer.
A call from Kramer was going to be an important one, one he had to take. He’d been prepared to hear there was another murder, maybe. So close on top of Willie T.’s, well, it would have been a shock.
But he hadn’t thought to hear that it would have been Miss Mary or that Max would be clinging to his life.
Now he was sitting in the hospital, trying to get answers from a woman who had no interest in giving them to him. It was like trying to get water from a stone. She’d given him her name—he didn’t know if he believed her.
It was possible. Weirder things had happened—weirder things, crazy things, evil things were happening in his town, but that didn’t mean he was just going to believe such a bizarre story without so much as a by-your-leave.
Lana Rossi. Here. After all this time, and just in time to save Max.
Or at least give him a fighting chance?
He didn’t think.
And unless Max made it through surgery, he wasn’t even going to be able to ask the old man, either.
“I think,” Sorenson said, leaning forward, his elbows braced on his knees as he studied the woman’s face, “that maybe we should take this from the top.”
The woman calling herself Lana didn’t even seem to hear him.
Her face was ghostly white, her dark hair falling forward to frame her features as she stared down the hall. He recognized that expression. It was the look he’d seen any number of times. Like if a person stared at those doors long enough, hard enough, the doors would talk and tell them what they needed to know.
The look of a woman in shock. But a lot of things could put a person in shock. Coming across a person near death. Or killing a person.
“Ma’am.” He put enough force behind the word that his voice echoed in the quiet, chilly hall. Churches and hospitals, sometimes they carried an eerie, almost surreal sort of silence. He thought it was almost a hallowed sort of ground, people carrying on serious, solemn tasks … tasks that sometimes ended in death. Or life.
She swung her head around and he found himself staring into a pair of pale-grey eyes.
It could be, he mused. It could very well be Lana Rossi. Jim Rossi had eyes like that—they could pin a person in place, darken from the color of the mist to pewter in a blink. Her hair was dark, but if he wasn’t mistaken, the roots were starting to show and those roots weren’t as dark as the rest. He tried to picture it, how she’d look twenty years older. Harder. Sadder.
She blinked and looked back down the hall, like she just had no use for him. No time to think about him, no time to entertain his question.
She’d have to make room in that mind of hers for him. All there was to it.
“You want me to believe,” he said, making his voice as caustic as possible, “that out of the blue, Lana Rossi shows up, just in time to save old Judge Max.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck what you believe,” she said, looking back at him. Her voice was pitched low, husky. And her eyes were full of disgust, frustration and fury. None of it was directed at him, but he felt the impact just the same. “And I’ve been here for a while. Not my fault none of you can take your thumbs out of your ass to notice.”
“Been here awhile, you say.” He stroked his jaw as she looked away, dismissing him yet again. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to get a lick of cooperation out of her until she had news on Judge Max.
Sorenson’s gut told him she hadn’t been the one to hurt Max. He couldn’t go by his gut, though. He had to go by what he could prove. Just then, there was precious little of that.
While he admired the loyalty, he needed to get some information out of her so they could find who’d hurt the old goat and killed his wife. Poor old Mary. The woman had been helpless and harmless.
“You realize,” Sorenson said, trying a different tactic, “what it’s going to do to him when he wakes up and realizes that somebody took his Mary from him. She was his world. The reason he got up in the morning. And somebody killed her.”
A sigh shuddered through Lana.
“I know that,” Lana said softly. She covered her face with her hands. Moments passed. Then she looked up at Sorenson, and the vulnerability on her face stabbed at him, right in the heart. And he saw it, clear as the day, the girl she’d been.
It was her, all right.
Which only opened up an entire world of more questions, questions he didn’t want to look at. Not considering some of the information he was sitting on. The last person likely to have seen Diane Sutter, David Sutter, Pete Sutter, was sitting in front of him.
And she was also wearing Max’s blood.
Those grey eyes didn’t seem to hide a cold-blooded killer.
But …
“I need you to take me back through what has happened today.” He kept his voice genial. Calm. Tried not to think about anything else. “Start with when you decided you were going to go see Max. And why.”
Lana opened her mouth, but just then Adam stepped up, covered her shoulder with his hand.
Sorenson decided then and there he just needed to pound his head against a hard surface. Stupid tired, running on no sleep, and the shock of seeing one of his oldest friends dying in front of him—no excuse. None.
“Don’t say anything,” Adam said, his voice flat. “You got a cop looking at you like that, you say nothing without a lawyer.”
“If she’s done nothing wrong, there’s no reason to need a lawyer,” Sorenson said. And he knew it was a lie. Whether Lana had hurt Max or not, she needed a lawyer, and bad.
Adam’s mouth curled in a sardonic smile. “Yeah, well, why don’t we just save that chat for when she has a lawyer, Chief?”
“Maybe we should just have it now. She can get herself lawyered up and we can get this done.” Sorenson was fed up with this bullshit. Rising from the chair, he pinned Lana with his gaze. He was no small man and she stayed in the seat, looking tired and worried, but she didn’t look at him. “Lana? You hear me? You can either talk to me about what happened today or we can just head on down to the station and talk about today, talk about twenty years ago. Talk about a lot of things that need to be talked about.”
She slid him a look from those foggy grey eyes. Her lashes dropp
ed low, shielding her gaze from him. “Talk now … or you’ll haul me in and … what? Make me talk about what, exactly?”
He took his time crossing the floor, well aware of the fact that she watched every step. She didn’t squirm or look away, and something about the way she watched him made him think she’d had more than one or two run-ins with the law before. She slid a brow up and leaned back in the chair, smirking at him.
“How about what happened at the Frampton house twenty years ago, Ms. Rossi? You were there. You know it. I know it. And as of right now, you appear to be the only survivor of whatever happened that night. I have at least one dead body that I’d like to discuss with you. So … we can either talk about Max. Or we can talk about the Sutter family. Pete, Diane, David. How do you want to do it?”
The tread of booted feet came striding up the hallway, close and getting closer.
Lana stared at him, an insolent smile on her face. “Get your questions together. I’ll have my lawyer answer them.”
Sorenson straightened up. “I guess you just have to do this the hard way. We’ll have that talk, Lana. I’m going to find out what happened to the Sutter family.”
“I guess—” She shrugged, looking away in mid-sentence.
And the final words died on her tongue.
* * *
Caine had pictured finding a lot of things when he got to the hospital. Kramer wouldn’t tell him shit. He’d caught a few bits and pieces from the uniformed cops, but nothing had been concrete and he hadn’t wanted to waste time.
He’d imagined finding people gathered around, already grieving.
He’d imagined finding yet more cops who wouldn’t tell him anything.
He’d been almost positive he’d find Noah there, and that was what Caine had hoped to find, because Noah would tell him something.
But Noah wasn’t there.
The cops were, just a few of them, gathered around Kramer in one waiting room. The big guy himself, Sorenson, waited in another one, a bit farther down the hall. He glared down at a dark-haired woman as he prattled on, the words connecting but not making sense.
“… right now, you appear to be the only survivor of whatever happened that night. I have at least one dead body that I’d like to discuss with you. So … we can either talk about Max. Or we can talk about the Sutter family. Pete, Diane, David.…”
Brascum had a hand on her shoulder.
As Caine’s boots rang on the floor, gazes cut his way and then bounced off.
Adam saw him and tensed.
Sorenson looked at him and then back at the woman.
The woman glanced up.
Twenty years fell away.
Her pale-grey eyes locked with his. She stared at him, her jaw dropping.
“Lana,” he whispered, coming to a halt like he’d been jerked on a chain.
* * *
Staring into those dark-blue eyes, Lana slowly rose to her feet. Sorenson was still glaring at her. Adam stood at her back, his hand tightening on her shoulder.
“Damn it, Rossi, are you listening to a damn thing I’m saying?” Sorenson said, his voice edgy.
“No,” she said, faint.
Then she took a step forward.
A second later, she lunged for the man standing in the middle of the hall.
Sorenson reached for her, but Adam cut between them and a moment later she was caught in David Sutter’s arms.
“David,” she whispered.
He said nothing. Twenty years ago, he’d been six inches taller than her, and all arms and legs, almost painfully skinny. There had been signs of muscle starting to show, but now … a tall, powerful body all but shook as he hugged her against him.
Long, silent moments passed, and then finally she eased back, staring up at him. His eyes were exactly the same.
Absolutely nothing else was.
The plain, simple clothing couldn’t hide the fact that David was completely, utterly beautiful. Even if his eyes were all but icy. A watery laugh escaped her as she studied him, from the straw hat to the toes of his brown shoes. “Geez, you decided to stay there, huh? What did you do? Go completely Amish? Did you do that Rumspringa thing and everything?”
He grinned, his teeth a white flash in his face. “Nah. It just keeps people from looking twice.”
He flicked a glance past them and Lana tensed.
He squeezed her shoulder. “It’s okay, Supergirl. You’re done trying to save me, okay?”
As they turned to face Adam and Chief Sorenson, she saw the appraising look on the faces of both men. Adam had already figured it out. Sorenson, though, was still glaring at her. “Now that you’re done reacquainting yourself, Ms. Rossi, grab your things. You’ve got questions to answer,” he bit off.
“About?” David said quietly.
“Caine, this is no concern of yours.”
“Oh, I don’t see how.” He reached up, tugged off his hand, ran a hand through his hair. “I overheard some, you see. You asking Lana about the Sutter family.”
He smiled, and a hard light glinted in his eyes. “If you wanted to know about my parents, Chief, all you had to do was ask. I’ve been here for twenty years.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
She couldn’t get in to see Max.
Lana stared at her short, ruthlessly clipped nails and fought the urge to bite at them.
She’d never been a nail-biter, but the urge was strong. If for no other reason than because she had nothing else to do.
She had things she wanted to do—David sat in the chair across from hers, his face serene, composed. Everything about him threw her—his face, the strength of him, those plain, simple clothes, the hat that sat on his knee. Hell, everything about him threw her off-balance, but she guessed that was why he’d done it. He looked nothing like the skinny kid who’d been just this side of veering into manhood. David Sutter had dressed in designer clothes, driven a Mustang that was just a few years off the lot, and he’d been sullen and moody and anger had simmered just below the surface.
He went by the name Caine now. Caine Yoder. People looked at him and saw a simple Amish man with a peaceful countenance and a calm demeanor and eyes that skimmed the surface.
People were stupid.
His eyes came to hers and she watched as his mouth hitched up in a faint smile.
As the questions threatened to bubble up inside she jerked her eyes away and focused on the clock on the wall. The second hand seemed to sweep by with excruciating slowness, and she groaned, turning her face and pressing it to Adam’s shoulder. “What is taking so long?” she whispered.
He shifted and slid his arm around her.
There was a hesitancy to it, something that she wasn’t used to from him, and she pressed herself more firmly against him. If they hadn’t been in the middle of the waiting room, she might have climbed onto his lap and wrapped herself around him, clung to him. She so desperately needed that contact, that reassurance. “Max is an old man, sugar,” Adam said, nuzzling her temple. “He’s a stubborn goat, but he’s still an old man. Even under the best circumstances, I don’t think he had what we could call a minor injury. They are trying to keep him alive.”
Curling an arm around him, she fisted her hand in the worn fabric of his shirt, felt the heat of him, the strength.
Then she opened her eyes and stared at the wall opposite her, not seeing the boring textured wallpaper, the pamphlets on grieving or how to see if you were at risk for heart disease or how to cut your cancer risks. She was seeing how Max would watch his Mary, how he’d smile when she’d smile at him. How the light in his eyes would die when the old woman would look at him and not know him.
“Why?” Lana asked quietly.
Feeling Adam’s confusion, she pulled back and rose from the couch, moving to stare out the door.
They all watched her. Sorenson, Adam and David. Caine. Whatever he called himself now.
And now several of the people who’d been waiting in the hall were watching her, too.
“The judge isn’t a quitter.”
That came from Sorenson.
She shot him a glittering look.
He stared back at her from under heavy brows, his mouth twisted in a scowl, his arms crossed over a thick, heavy chest. She didn’t know him. He had moved to town not long after she’d left, from Otisco, a small bit of land out near Charlestown. Otisco made Madison look like a booming metropolis. She didn’t know much about him, but she could read the look in his eyes, had learned enough about him in the past few hours, since they’d settled down to wait. He was a cop. He wasn’t one who made her want to keep a witness with her at all times. And he was the kind who’d dig in and wait her out, too.
So she would be getting a lawyer, and she had better find a good one.
But being a good cop didn’t make Sorenson an expert on the human condition.
She looked back at the doors that separated them from Max. “It isn’t about being a quitter. Max had one person in this whole world … just one. And that was his wife. Miss Mary was his everything. Why he got up in the morning, why he worked so hard to keep those flowers blooming even though he hated them.” Lana thought about a time years ago when she’d seen him cussing a bed of petunias out—he was allergic, a fact not that many people probably realized, because Judge Max hid his weaknesses and he hid them well. But the bright and happy colors had Mary happy.
So he made sure she had them. Always. Even though Lana had seen over the past weeks how Mary had slid into a place where she didn’t even recognize Max at times.
“So you think he’ll just give up since she’s not here.” Sorenson shook his head. “That’s being a quitter.”
“No. If she was here, he’d have something to fight for. There’s a difference between fighting for something … and just letting go. It doesn’t make you a quitter if you’re just tired.” Lana thought of the weight she’d seen in his eyes and she knew it was the truth. Max was tired.
But she also remembered his words.
The gravity in his voice as he said, I’ll find answers.
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