Heather's Gift (24 page)

love, their protection and their caring. To know that no matter where he was, or what happened, Heather would be safe and loved.

But there was more to it, and he was only now realizing it. The bond that had started by that damned pond so long ago, was something too deep to deny, and yet too ethereal to explain.

He hunched forward, lowering his head as he stared at the whisky bottle between his feet.

“I love you all, Marly,” he whispered. “Heather holds my soul, but I love you and Sarah, too.” He frowned, fighting to understand, to make sense of it himself. “You weren’t raised like we were.” He raised his eyes slowly to meet her dark gaze. “And then the abuse… It makes us so different, Marly, and I’m terrified that one of you will be hurt, that we’re scarring your souls as much as ours were.”

Silence fell between them as he dropped his gaze before bringing the whisky to his mouth once again.

“Sam.” She stopped him, her small hand on his wrist as the other lifted the bottle from his grip. “I look at you, and I see parts of Cade and of Brock. And it’s the same for Sarah. But we see you as well. We see a man we’ve grown to love and to respect, one who places our safety and our pleasure above his own. There’s no jealousy and no anger, Sam. We’re family. A different kind of family, but a family.”

“So the family that fucks together, stays together?” he bit out, jerking to his feet as he paced to the arched opening that led out to the pool area. “God dammit, Marly…”

“No, Sam, a family that loves stays together. However they love, whether it’s a love acceptable to the world or not, it’s love that holds a family together. Love and respect and the commitment to it, Sam. You know that even better than I do. If you didn’t love and respect your brothers, then the three of you would have drifted apart years ago. You wouldn’t still be fighting to survive, nor would you be trying to make sense of whatever demons haunt you all. Love, Sam.”

She came up behind him, her arms going around his waist as she leaned against his back. Sam turned to her, enfolding her in his arms as he rested his cheek against the black silk of her hair.

“He saved us all,” Sam whispered. “Cade, Marly. He saved us, even though he doesn’t believe he did.”

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“You saved each other, Sam,” she said gently, and he wondered how much of her statement was true.

“Sam?” Heather’s soft voice had him pulling back from Marly, looking over his shoulder as Heather watched them from the sliding glass door that led into the family room.

She didn’t look angry or jealous, she looked frightened. Terribly frightened.

“Heather.” He turned to her, knowing he had hurt her, knowing this day would come…

“Sam, the sheriff is here. We have trouble.”

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Chapter Thirty-Three

“
You like fucking your brothers, August?”
Mark Tate’s voice echoed through the room, courtesy of the small recorder Sheriff Martinez held in his hand. He sounded breathless, frightened. In the background you could vaguely hear another voice directing him.

“
You have two hours to show up at my place, or I send these pictures I have to every newspaper
and law enforcement office in the country. Interesting pictures of a dead man
.”

“
You’re a dead man
.” Sam heard his own voice, cold, hard, a promise of violence that he only vaguely remembered.

The sound of the phone disconnecting was loud in the room; those who stood listening were silent, held in shock.

“Oh God.” Marly’s whispered cry was echoed by Sarah’s as they stood in his brothers’ arms.

Heather stood beside him, but he couldn’t reach out to her, couldn’t look at her. He stared down at his hands and saw the blood. Rick and Tara stood somewhere behind the sheriff, witnesses to their shame.

He raised his head slowly, his body tensing in rage as he stared into the cold, hard gaze of a sheriff he had once counted as a friend.

“You should have kept the family out of it, Josh.” His voice resonated with a fury he couldn’t contain. “They didn’t have to hear that.”

“Goddammit, Sam.” Cade’s voice sounded shattered, echoing eerily within his head.
I did it, Sam!
He wanted to shake his head, to rip the shattered words from his head, along with the memories so shadowy and twisted that he couldn’t make sense of them. “Why the hell did you leave the fucking house? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It was me he called.” He kept his voice low as he continued to watch Martinez. “I would have taken care of it.”

“We’re a family, Sam,” Brock reminded him, his voice tortured. Sam glanced at him, seeing how Sarah hid her face against his chest. In shame? Did she regret now, allowing him to touch her, to dirty her? Hatred blazed through his mind as he leveled his stare back at the sheriff.

“The only thing that saved your ass from an arrest warrant was the fact that forensics proved Tate was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat. So hard, in fact, that wood splinters were found in the remains of the body. The coroners had also found traces of a strong narcotic in the battered internal organs.” His eyes narrowed then. “If that wasn’t bad enough, someone tried to mess with the results at the coroner’s office. Luckily, it was discovered. Computer records can be a chancy thing, and old Doc Lora Leigh

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Harper doesn’t like them much. His notes were handwritten rather than recorded and transcribed. It appears to me that this is a family problem, Sam. You’re being framed, and it looks like there’s more than one murder here to solve.”

“There’s about to be three.” He stared at Martinez, his teeth drawn back in a snarl he couldn’t contain.

“Sam.” Heather’s hand covered the fist at his side as she moved closer, blocking him, should he try to move.

He stared down at her, his body tensing, expecting disgust, hatred. What he saw tore into his soul with the force of a knife through unprotected flesh. Tears welled in her eyes, soft understanding shining beneath them.

“Sam, Martinez might think you’re serious rather than angry,” she said with a smile, yet a warning look. “Sheriffs get serious about death threats, darling.”

She moved against his chest, staring up at him, beseeching. An anchor in the storm brewing in him. His arms went around her, terrified if he didn’t hold onto something or someone, then he would be sucked into the growing shadows of his own mind.

“Cade. Did Tate have pictures?” Joshua moved farther into the room then, and Sam watched as the other man stared at the oldest August brother. “There’s rumors he was getting them. That he had proof against the three of you.”

“Of what, Josh?” Cade was cold, his voice soft, menacing. “You have unexplained deaths?”

Joshua’s gaze was cynical, knowing, as he glanced at Cade before allowing the look to encompass the rest of the occupants in the room.

“No.” Josh shook his head. “All I have is an unrecorded phone call to the sheriff’s department by someone who went to great pains to disguise their voice. I heard quite a detailed account of a murder in Utah twelve years ago.”

A muscle jumped in Cade’s jaw, and Sam saw the fury that flared in his brother’s eyes.

“Marly…” Cade whispered her name on a sigh.

“No, damn you.” She thumped his chest where she rested against it, and Sam could hear her the desperate battle against the tears inside her. “I won’t leave. Not again, Cade August. I won’t let you face this alone. I won’t.”

Sam’s arms tightened on Heather then. He couldn’t let her go. He couldn’t let her leave. God help him, if she didn’t hold onto him, he didn’t know what he would do to the bastard destroying them.

“I’m staying, too.” Sarah turned in Brock’s arms. Her expression was tormented, filled with knowledge and pain. “We’re a part of this, Cade. All of us. It’s not just you and your brothers anymore. No more hiding.”

“Damn you, Martinez, why didn’t you just shoot us and be done with it?” Sam bit out furiously, as he released Heather and raked his fingers through his hair. “It would Lora Leigh

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have been more humane than this. I’ll be damned if I’ll stand here and listen to you destroy my family.”

He moved for the door.

“Sam, you walk out that door and I’ll arrest you for obstruction of justice and suspicion of murder. I’ll lock you up so fast it will make your head spin.”

Sam stopped. The memory of the jail cell was fresh in his mind. The memories of another cell were far clearer. He turned back slowly.

“You’ll have to kill me first, Josh. Can you do that?” Sam clenched his fists at his sides, fighting the betraying memories welling inside him. They had fought so many years to forget, and now it was being ground in their faces in a way they could never ignore, nor escape.

“Goddamn, Martinez,” Brock cursed. “Let him go. We can handle this.”

Something inside Sam stilled. He looked at his brothers, seeing desperation and a foreboding fear. He couldn’t fight the suspicions any longer, no matter how desperately he needed to. “Protecting me again, Brock?” he asked his brother carefully. Cade shook his head at the other brother, a clear warning in his eyes as Brock stared to speak. Sam advanced back into the room. He looked at Heather; saw her worry, her concern. Rick was observant as always, while Tara watched them all with an edge of sympathy.

“What makes you think we know anything about Utah?” Sam asked him softly.

“This is Texas, Josh.”

“And Marly’s uncle was Jedediah Marcelle. He was killed in Utah twelve years ago by an apparent house fire. Coroner’s report suspected he was dead before the blaze. Her natural father, Reginald Jennings barely escaped…”

“No! No!” Marly’s shattered voice echoed through the room. “Oh God, Cade. Cade, no! You didn’t hide this from me.” She was screaming at him, fighting the hold he had on her as Cade’s face twisted in tortured, agonizing pain as her tears began to fall. “Oh God! Damn you. Damn you, you knew…”

Rick and Tara moved then, placing themselves between the sheriff and Cade as Sam rushed to his brother, to Marly.

“Oh God. Oh God. Cade.”

“Get her the fuck out of here,” Sam screamed as Cade fought her, fought to keep her in his arms, to accept the pain radiating through her cries as his face twisted into lines of grief. “Go, goddammit.”

Sam felt his heart breaking. He had feared Cade wouldn’t share the knowledge with her, the fact that her uncle had raped them, that her father had known. Oh yeah, he remembered Reginald Robert.

Getting Marly out of the room wasn’t easy. She fought Cade, broken, despairing. She knew. Sam could feel her knowledge pulsing in every cell of his body. She knew the truth, and it would kill her. Kill Cade. It would destroy them all. Lora Leigh

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And Martinez had to have known it. He swung around, raw intense rage boiling in his blood, ripping through his body as he jumped for the sheriff.

“Sam, no.”

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Chapter Thirty-Four

“Did the three of you really think you could keep something like this quiet forever?” Martinez’s voice was cold, hard as he paced the room, flicking a glance at Brock and Sam as he turned at the other end of the room. “Dammit to hell, Sam. You should have known better.”

Marly’s reaction had shaken them all. Joshua wasn’t left unaffected, or unharmed. His eye was nearly swollen shut from the one punch Sam had managed to land before Brock and Rick had taken him to the floor. All he could hear were Marly’s cries; all he could feel was Cade’s shame. All their shame. It was like an inferno in his gut, searing into his soul.

They had heard Marly’s screams for too long, broken, ravaged. Sam was desperate to go up, to help Cade comfort her, as he knew Brock was. But was stuck here instead, dealing with this bastard. Stuck in the memories of a past that never seemed to clearly emerge within his mind. But the screams were there, as was the blood.

“You did it deliberately.” Heather accused the sheriff as she sat beside Sam, her hand on his knee, her shoulder pressed against his arm. “You’re a cold-hearted bastard, Sheriff Martinez.”

Unfortunately, Sam agreed with her. Joshua had always been too damned blunt. Too damned straightforward. He went for the jugular when he needed information, and didn’t care whose blood was shed.

“Dammit, Heather, you’re out of line,” Tara bit out as she faced her from the opposite couch. “You have no opinion in this.”

“There’s where you’re wrong,” she argued, obviously fighting to keep her voice quiet. “He was out of line. He had no right to drop that little bombshell the way he did.”

Sam could only sit in silence, watching Martinez as he felt the rage ice in the pit of his stomach, and hear the screams that seemed closer than ever before. His eyes were narrowed, watching the man who had once been a friend, a confidant. A long time ago. In what seemed to have been another life.

Martinez grunted sarcastically.

“Of course I was, otherwise, Sam’s ass would be in jail for assault and the rest of you for suspicion of obstruction. Unfortunately, I’m about as in the fucking dark as one sheriff could be. Now how the hell am I supposed to keep the lot of you out of prison if you don’t fucking help me?” His voice rose as his anger broke the cool demeanor he usually kept. “Dammit, don’t you think I knew something happened back then? We Lora Leigh

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were friends, Brock, Sam. Best friends until you returned from Utah. How fucking stupid did you think I was?”

As far as Sam was concerned, it was the wrong question to ask.

“Stupid enough to destroy an innocent woman,” Sam yelled back, his fists clenched, his body so tense Heather nearly sat on him to make sure he stayed in his seat. She stared back defiantly as he flicked her a hard glance. She didn’t look ready to move anytime soon. Amazingly enough, there were no recriminations in her look, no sense of disgust, no anger. Understanding marked her dark green eyes, though her face was pale from stress. Her touch was gentle, and though she looked ready to go to battle, it was the sheriff she seemed more than willing to fight. He loved her. Needed her with a desperation he couldn’t explain, but he was damned tired of everyone thinking he needed to be protected. Needed to be cuddled and cared for. He shook his head at that thought. He had spent too many years trying to comfort Cade by playing the prankster, by joking his way through the bleak darkness. Now that he couldn’t fight it any longer, his whole family was falling apart around him.