JOSH (19 page)

Which it was.

He was in love with Jaycee, and she was in love with him. Yeah, definitely a new lease.

“So how will this work?” she asked, looping her arm around his waist. “Will we live at the ranch after we’re married?”

“I’d like that. But if there are too many bad memories—”

“There are good memories, too,” she interrupted. “Like before the kidnappers came.”

Yeah, making love to Jaycee was indeed a good memory, and he hoped to create a lot more memories just like that one. In bed and out.

“Don’t know if your place will be big enough, though, when the baby comes,” she continued.

“So we can build a place like Grayson’s. There’s plenty of land, and it might be fun to see our baby playing with all the cousins.”

“Our baby,”
she repeated and stopped again. “So when we build this house, what color are we painting the nursery?”

“Green,” he teased. “It’s my favorite color.”

She gave him a playful jab in the stomach. “Pink or blue?”

“Both.”

Jaycee blinked. And Josh laughed. “Blue this time. But I’m hoping next time, we can go for pink.”

Josh kissed that smile right off Jaycee’s mouth, scooped her up and started for home.

Oh, yeah, there’d definitely be a next time.

* * * * *

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Chapter One

The front door was unlocked. Jenny never left it
unlocked.

Hair rising on her neck and arms, Briar Blackwood took a
careful step backward on the porch and drew her Glock 27. Not her weapon of
choice; her Mossberg 835 shotgun was locked in the cabinet inside the cabin. But
the Glock would do.

She stayed still for a breathless moment, listening for
movement within the cabin. Was she overreacting? Maybe her aunt had fallen
asleep on the sofa without locking up.

No. The break-in a month earlier had rattled Aunt Jenny’s
nerves. She hadn’t been comfortable staying at Briar’s place with Logan alone at
night since. She always locked all the doors and windows the second Briar left
and wouldn’t even answer the door unless she knew the voice on the other
side.

So why was the door unlocked now?

Everyone who mattered to Briar was behind that unlocked door.
And she could stand here holding her breath, or she could go in there to see
what was what.

But not through the front door.

Briar edged to the corner of the porch, making herself a harder
target if someone inside started shooting. Tightening her grip on the Glock, she
pulled her cell phone from her jacket pocket and dialed the cabin landline. She
heard the phone ringing through the cabin walls.

No answer.

Now she knew for sure something was wrong. Aunt Jenny was a
light sleeper. She never slept through a ringing phone.

Shoving her cell phone back in her pocket, Briar slid between
the wood slabs of the porch railing and dropped three feet to the ground below.
Stopping below the big kitchen window, she peered up at the jars of fruits and
vegetables stacked in three tight rows in front of the window. The colorful jars
took the place of curtains, both as a dash of brightness in the small kitchen
and as a privacy screen, keeping out the unwanted gazes of strangers who might
be lurking outside the mountain cabin.

They were still intact. Last time someone had broken in, they’d
shattered the jars and left a huge mess in her kitchen.

What could they want? She was poor as a church mouse. Her new
job as a Bitterwood police officer would do little more than pay the bills and
allow her to put aside a little bit for her son Logan’s college fund.

Could it be her job that had drawn the intruders to her
door?

She edged her way around to the root cellar door and eased it
open, wincing at the low creaks of the hinges. Six concrete steps took her down
into the tightly packed cellar, where shelves full of canned goods filled one
side of the room, and bins of root vegetables filled the other. She used the
flashlight app on her cell phone to illuminate the narrow path between shelves
and bins, but she still managed to stumble into the shelves near the stairs.
With a muttered curse, she barely caught a jar of tomatoes as it started to
topple off the shelf above.

Setting it right, she shined the cell-phone light up the
stairs. The door to the cabin was closed. She crept up the stairs and tried the
doorknob. Locked, as expected. She eased her keys from her pocket and inserted
the right one. The doorknob turned smoothly, and she carefully slipped into the
hallway, shutting off the phone light.

She went very still, just listening. There was no sound at all,
she realized. Not even the hum of the refrigerator or the whir of heated air
blowing from the wall heater nearby.

The power must be out. Had someone cut it?

Glad for the rubber soles of her work shoes, she went silently
into the living room and took a quick scan of the situation. Her eyes had begun
to adjust to the low light, allowing her to see that the living room was a mess.
Sofa cushions had been pulled from the sofa and ripped open, the stuffing lying
all over everything. The intruders may have spared her jars of fruits and
vegetables this time, but most of the contents of her refrigerator lay scattered
across the floor and counters of the tiny kitchen, going to ruin.

She stepped back into the hallway, her heart pounding with
equal parts adrenaline and dread.

Please, God, let Logan and Jenny be okay.
Please, please, please....

The door to her own bedroom was closest. That was where Jenny
slept when Briar was working a night shift, as she’d done during her stint as a
dispatcher, and as she’d be doing for the first few months on the job as a
police officer. But when Briar tried to push the door open, something was
blocking it. She peered through the narrow space between the door and the frame
and saw a pale white hand outstretched.

Jenny!

A noise in the next room down made her freeze. That was Logan’s
room.

Someone was moving within.

She reached through the narrow crack in the door and touched
her fingertips to Jenny’s wrist. Relief rattled through her when she found a
strong, steady pulse.

Pulling back, she pushed to her feet and fell back on her
police-academy training, so recently finished. She led with her pistol, moving
as quietly and quickly as she could. The thumping sound she’d heard earlier
repeated. A drawer closing, she recognized.

She touched the door and found that it wasn’t latched. It swung
open slowly and silently—thank God she’d oiled the hinges recently. It used to
creak like crazy.

A tall dark-clad figure stood silhouetted by the faint
moonlight coming through Logan’s window. He had his back to her, allowing her to
spare a quick glance toward the bed to reassure herself that Logan was still
there, his face turned toward his pillow and his little chest rising slowly and
steadily.

“Freeze—police!”

The dark silhouette whirled not toward her but toward Logan’s
bed.

She couldn’t fire at him, not with her son so close, so she
shoved the gun in her jacket pocket and ran, hitting the intruder solidly. They
both bounced off the bed and hit the floor.

“Mama!” Logan’s soft, frightened wail tore at Briar’s heart,
but she couldn’t let go of the man punching and kicking at her in an attempt to
escape.

He eluded her grasp and started toward the door. She scrambled
up after him, tackling him as he darted into the hall.

Suddenly, strong, cruel fingers bit into her arm at the same
time she was yanked back by her hair, allowing the man she’d brought down to
scurry out of reach.

She grabbed the Glock from her jacket and twisted around,
shoving the barrel at her captor. “Let me go!”

He dropped her with a hard shove, slamming her back into the
floor. Her head hit the hardwood with a jarring thud, and for a second the whole
world seemed to explode into colorful confetti.

Then her vision cleared, and she swung the Glock in a
semicircle, looking for any sign of the intruders.

The front door was open, barely visible from her position on
the hallway floor. She pushed to her feet, wincing at the pain in her shoulder,
and edged her way into the living room.

She took a quick peek outside. There was no sound of a motor,
but she thought she made out the rustle of leaves in the woods just beyond her
property. Even with a three-quarter moon in the sky, she couldn’t detect any
movement in the gloom of the woods, just the fading rustles of the two intruders
running away.

She shoved the door closed and engaged the lock, her heart
pounding and her head aching.

“Mama!” Logan’s wail drew her back to the hallway. Pocketing
her weapon, she pulled out her cell phone and turned on the flashlight app,
shining it into the darkness.

Logan stood in the middle of the hall, his blue T-shirt riding
up his little round belly and his pajama pants sagging to reveal his big-boy
underwear.

She ran and scooped him up, pressing her face against his
little chest, breathing in the beautiful smell of sleepy little boy. “Mama’s
right here,” she assured him, patting his back in soothing circles.

Mama’s got you.

* * *

H
E
SHOULD
HAVE
known Doyle Massey
would be at the hospital. The Bitterwood chief of police seemed to show up
everywhere Dalton Hale went these days, like a particularly hard-to-kill weed in
a flower garden. And, as luck would have it, tonight the sister was there, as
well, her auburn hair, green eyes and prominent cheekbones a persistent, visible
reminder of what a mess his own life had become in the last month.

Dalton had finally reached the point, however, where the sight
of Doyle and Dana Massey didn’t send him into a seething rage. At least, not on
the outside. He was still boiling a little inside, but he set that emotion aside
and entered the Maryville Mercy Hospital waiting room with his head high and his
own green eyes clear and focused.

He bumped gazes with Laney Hanvey, who sat next to Massey. She
was about to marry the chief, which had strained their formerly collegial
relationship, but she was still the friendliest face in the room. She murmured
something to her fiancé and crossed the room to meet him.

“Is something wrong?” she asked quietly.

He realized she didn’t know he was there for the same reason
she was. “Not on my end of things. I’m here to talk to the victim.”

Her gaze narrowed. “Jenny Franklin is still undergoing
tests.”

“I meant the widow. The Blackwood woman.” He realized, as
Laney’s expression darkened, that he sounded cold and officious. Not the sort of
man he’d ever been, not before now. He’d been the prosecutor who went the extra
mile, tried to get to know the people for whom he sought justice. He still
received Christmas cards from people he’d helped. He never used to call people
things like
victim
or
the
widow.

He was doing a lot of things now that he’d never done
before.

“Her name is Briar,” Laney said quietly. “Do you have to do
this tonight?”

“Was she injured?”

“Just roughed up a little. Didn’t even let the paramedics check
her.”

Dalton looked past Laney until his gaze snagged on the
dark-haired woman sitting with a small boy sleeping in her arms. She sat apart
from the others, though most of them threw concerned glances toward her now and
then.

“That’s her, isn’t it?” He nodded toward the woman with the
child.

Laney followed his gaze. “Yes. You know the police already have
her statement, right? She’s a cop herself. She was thorough.”

That was news to him, actually. “I thought she was a
dispatcher.”

“She graduated from the academy back in December, and a slot
opened on the police force last week, so she finally got her badge.”

Laney was answering all his questions with details, he
realized, because she wanted to keep him from bothering Briar Blackwood. And
hell, maybe if he were in her position, he’d be doing the same. He hadn’t
exactly covered himself with glory over the past few weeks as he’d dealt with
finding out his whole bloody life had been a lie.

Matter of fact, he’d been a complete ass about it.

“I just want to ask her a few questions about the break-in.” He
intentionally added a gentle tone to his voice, though he was feeling anything
but gentle at the moment.

Laney’s eyes narrowed again, as if she saw through the
pretense. But after a moment, her expression cleared. “I’ll introduce you.”

He’d have preferred to approach the woman alone, away from all
her friends, but he couldn’t exactly make any demands, could he? It wasn’t as if
she were the culprit here.

At least, not that he could prove.

He followed Laney across the waiting room floor, ignoring the
watchful gazes of the others, though he did spare the slightest glance at Dana
Massey, as if his eyes couldn’t resist one more quick look to make sure he
hadn’t been mistaken about the resemblance.

No, still there, the faint but unmistakable traits that had
convinced her, on the day of their first meeting, that he was the long-lost half
brother she’d only recently learned about.

He dragged his gaze forward, grinding his teeth.

“Briar?”

The dark-haired woman looked up at Laney, then let her gaze
slide slowly to Dalton’s face, her clear gray eyes darkening with recognition.
So she already knew who he was. Probably not good news, given the tumble his
reputation had taken around the Bitterwood Police Department in the past few
weeks.

“Mrs. Blackwood, I’d like to ask you a few questions about the
break-in this evening,” he said, not waiting for the unnecessary
introduction.

Beside him, Laney released a soft sigh. “Briar, this is
assistant county prosecutor Dalton Hale.”

“I know who he is,” she said quietly, still holding his gaze.
“I’ve given a statement to the Bitterwood Police Department. Detective Nix is
the lead detective.” She nodded toward the dark-haired man sitting next to Dana
Massey. Walker Nix. Bitterwood detective and Dana’s significant other. Nix
stared back at him, as if daring him to cause a ruckus.

In Briar’s lap the dark-haired little boy stirred and made a
low mewling noise that sounded like a puppy whining. He tightened his little
arms around his mother’s neck, clinging like a monkey as she rubbed his back and
murmured soothing nonsense to him until he settled down.

A painful sensation wriggled in the pit of his stomach. He
killed it with ruthless dispatch. “I understand that. But I have some questions
about the incident that the detective may not have known to ask.”

Something shifted in those gunmetal eyes, a flicker of flame
warming their wintry depths. “Such as?”

Ah,
he thought,
she’s curious.
That was good. Curiosity was exactly the sort of
trait he needed from this woman if he was going to get the answers he sought.
“Such as, do you believe this most recent break-in could be related to the one
that happened a few weeks ago?”