Christmas Conspiracy (13 page)

He gripped the stone wall and stood back. Dirt fluttered down the well, echoing on the way down, the hollow sound mirroring his emotions.

Struggling against a childhood dread, Logan rounded the structure to get a better angle and swept the inside surface again, foot by foot. More dark splatters appeared on jutting rocks, and finally the light pierced a deeply shadowed spot beneath a series of crumbling wooden planks.

He could just make out several distinctive white shapes. Human bones. He shined the light farther revealing a human skull. Logan gasped, even though he’d known what he would find. Below the ledge where Lanie had fallen lay the skeleton of his mother.

The mother who had never left.

* * *

L
OGAN LOOKED SO ALONE
, he hurt Kat’s heart. He stood, separate and apart, watching as a crane lowered a member of the forensics team foot by foot into the well to take more photographs. She didn’t know how long she’d studied his stiff posture. He hadn’t budged since the medical examiner he’d had flown in arrived.

The entire day had taken on a surreal quality. Because there was no way of knowing how the body had ended up in the well, the ME was treating the case as a homicide. The guarded looks the workers threw around were telling. They had their suspicions.

Kat couldn’t imagine what Logan was feeling right now. She’d suffered the devastating loss of her mother, but that had been to cancer. Not a possible murder. He’d believed he’d been abandoned the last fifteen years, only to find out he was wrong. The darkness and anguish in his eyes were haunting. Did he blame himself for not finding her before this?

Being around Logan this long, she guessed he would.

Investigators, photographers and various crime units spread over the area. Kat walked across the yard, wanting to comfort him, but she hesitated. In the hours since he’d rushed back to the house, he hadn’t said much of anything to anyone, except to get this investigation started. He’d disappeared into his office, and a dozen calls later, his disciplined focus got him everything he wanted. She’d never seen law enforcement act so quickly.

Each passing hour etched deeper lines of strain into his lean cheeks.

Did he know he didn’t have to be alone anymore? He was trying to remain strong and in control, when this had to be tearing him apart. If only he’d lean on her, like she leaned on him.

The kids were napping. Gretchen waited inside listening for any stir. She knew who needed her—if he let her in. When she reached his side, his shoulders tensed and his hands fisted, but he didn’t move. Not knowing what else to do, she lifted his fist to her lips and kissed it gently. When he relaxed his hand, she threaded her fingers through his. “I want to be with you. Is that okay?”

He frowned and stared down at her hand as if their threaded fingers were something strange and unusual. Yet he didn’t step away, just nodded.

After a moment of silence, he said, “They’ve confirmed it’s a woman. Thirties or forties.” His voice was matter-of-fact, but the husky edge gave his emotions away. “She’s been there a long time.”

His grip tightened on Kat’s hand, but she didn’t mention it. “What are you thinking?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“I do, Logan. Talk to me.”

He turned toward her. “I’m thinking that I suck as a son. If that’s my…my mother,” Logan gestured toward the well, “she’s been a few hundred feet from my front door for fifteen years and I never knew it.”

She raised a hand to his injured cheek. “You were a kid when it happened.”

“It doesn’t matter.
I never looked for her,
” he insisted. “I just figured she ran off. I was lying in my bed crying and cursing her for leaving me on my birthday, while she was out here dying.” He swore. “What a selfish jerk I was. I probably still am.” He shook his head and backed off. “Sorry. Now is not the time for me to be around anyone.”

Screaming sirens and red and blue strobe lights from an approaching vehicle stopped Kat from responding. The noise drowned out the sound of the crane. An SUV barreled down the road and skidded to a halt in front of the house.

Two men exited the sheriff’s vehicle and walked toward them. Logan greeted them, not even a tinge of emotion in his voice.

Kat stood nearby, wishing she could hold him tight and not let him go.

Logan took in a deep breath and reached out his hand to the sheriff. “Thanks for coming, Blake.” Logan nodded at the other man. “Deputy Parris.”

Logan gestured her way. “This is Kat. Protective detail.”

She stiffened, then turned to look at Logan, stunned.
Protective detail?
In other words, a client? Icy hurt swept through her. It was all she could do not to cry.

The sheriff, a tall, striking man, touched the tip of his Stetson and nodded in acknowledgment, “Ma’am.”

Deputy Parris followed suit.

The sheriff, his hazel eyes worried, gazed at the madhouse around them. “Sorry it took us so long. Serious accident on the road out to Big Springs,” Blake said. “What’s the latest?”

“I think we found my mother’s body.”

Both the sheriff and his deputy froze in place.

“Your ma never left?” Parris finally blurted out. “But I remember hearing—”

Blake cleared his throat cutting off the deputy’s words.

“You can say it,” Logan interjected. “Everyone thought she abandoned me and my father. Including us. My father pretty much drank himself to death after that.” Logan looked out across the ranch, the only legacy he had left from his mother. “I can’t believe she was here all the time.”

Blake tilted his Stetson back. “How’d you find her?”

“My daughter was chasing a stray kitten and fell down an old, covered-up well.”

“Whoa. Hold on.” The sheriff stepped back. “Since when do you have a daughter?”

Kat felt her face flush and the sheriff’s gaze flashed from her to Logan, then returned to her, his eyes narrowing this time. Not necessarily in a friendly way.

Logan ignored Blake’s question about his daughter and gave him a factual rundown of Lanie finding the necklace.

“I tore down the old barn to make room for a new building,” Logan ended. “Dad had closed off this area about ten years ago. He said these outbuildings and the grounds were too unstable. The earth movers have really churned things up lately.”

Kat recognized the speculation in the sheriff’s eyes.

“Your father closed this area off?” Blake ventured. “Have you considered—”

“That he killed my mom and hid the body? Hell, yeah.”

Kat froze in shock. Logan suspected his father of killing his mother? Her heart ached for him, but her mind worried. The disconnected expression on Logan’s face. She barely recognized the man she’d begun to care for again.

“What do you remember from that day?” Blake pulled out his notebook. “Did they fight?”

Logan nodded. “My father was a mean SOB when he got drunk and he’d really tied one on that day. He told her he hated the ranch and everything about it because it was hers. Hated that my mom had more than him and she’d told him straight up, the ranch was mine if she died. If he could’ve sold it, he probably would have, but she left it in my name and told everyone about it. Instead, he did his best to gamble it away.”

Kat couldn’t imagine what Logan had gone through growing up. Instinctively, she reached out and clasped his hand. To her surprise, he held it tightly in his grasp.

Blake closed his notebook. “I think we’d better talk some more later.”

Logan nodded, but his face showed no emotion now—as if he’d gone back behind his protective wall, but his hand squeezed Kat’s and she responded in kind, letting him know she was there for him.

Blake’s gaze dropped to their linked hands and he quirked a brow at Logan. “You say your little girl found the necklace? Can I talk to her?”

“The twins are in the house,” Logan said. “It’s been rough. I interviewed her. She’s not really old enough to be much help.”

Blake stopped, putting his notebook away in his pocket. “Twins?”

“Boy and girl. Two and a half years old.”

“Okayyyy,” the sheriff drawled. “I guess I need to come around more often to keep up with the latest events.”

Kat could see all the facts Logan had thrown out registering in Blake’s mind. She could tell from his expression he knew a lot more about her than she’d originally suspected. She was the woman who had run from Logan three years ago, and now she was back with two kids in tow, obviously in dire financial straits based on her clothing. Did he see her as a gold digger? Is that how all Logan’s friends would see her?

Her grip tightened on Logan’s hand, but he subtly shook it off as an attractive woman in a coroner’s jacket walked toward them. The woman had come to a crime scene dressed in a suit and heels? Was she kidding? She must’ve been called away from some fancy function.

Kat’s old insecurities flared at the woman’s put-together appearance compared to her own faded jeans and much-worn shirt. She remembered all too well how everyone had laughed at the hand-me-down clothes that her mother had patched and rehemmed over and over, in the hopes the tattered material would last through another season.

The woman greeted everyone as old friends, her smile teasing and comfortable. Kat could learn to hate her. Or really like her, more’s the pity. “Logan. Blake. Deputy Parris.” Her glance skimmed over Kat, to whom she gave a quick nod when Logan finally made introductions, with even less information than before.

“Debra,” Blake said, “what do you know so far?”

Doctor
Sandoval sent a quick, sympathetic look to Logan. “Lots of trauma, but that’s to be expected from the depth of the well. We found her purse. Her license was in it. There’s little doubt it’s Hannah Carmichael.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry, Logan. I know how close you two were, but perhaps this will give you a sense of closure that she’s been found.”

“Did she…” Logan began, his voice so soft they were barely audible. “Was she…beaten?”

Sorrow lit the coroner’s eyes. “I can’t tell yet.”

“I want to know.”

“I won’t keep anything from you. I remember what you went through.” She placed her hand on his arm and met Logan’s gaze, a connection between them briefly flaring.

Kat recognized the familiarity, the softness in the woman’s eyes. The awareness in their touch. They’d been lovers once. Had Kat’s coming here interrupted something? Her stomach roiled. No, Logan would have told her, but it was obvious that Debra Sandoval still had strong feelings for him.

“Dr. Sandoval.”

The coroner turned toward one of the workers and nodded at him before facing Logan. “I’ll keep you informed, and I promise I’ll get you every answer possible.” She kissed his cheek. “Again, I’m
so
sorry about your mother.”

Dr. Sandoval offered quick goodbyes to the others before following the worker back to the site.

Kat watched Logan’s lover go. The woman was beautiful, sophisticated, educated. A doctor. Everything Kat wasn’t. Someone who would fit into Logan’s life. Suddenly, Kat’s place next to him didn’t feel quite so comfortable. He hadn’t reached for her hand again after he’d let her go. Perhaps Dr. Sandoval had reminded him of what he could have, while all Kat had brought him was trauma.

He’d been so amazing from the moment he’d saved her life, she’d started to take his presence for granted, to assume the feelings sparking between them were real. To him, maybe she
was
just a protection detail.

She couldn’t take the uncertainty. “I need to check on the kids,” she said, trying to push down the hurt and confusion rising in her throat.

Logan nodded, but barely glanced her way. “I’ll send one of the men with you.”

No more living in a fantasyland. She might be a princess, and Logan a brave, handsome protector who’d saved both her and her children, but none of that mattered, except in fairy tales.

As the crime scene illustrated all too well, real life didn’t always have happy endings.

* * *

A
SHOUT CAME FROM
deep within the well. Debra Sandoval orchestrated her men. She was good at her job. One of the best—which is why Logan had sent for her, even if she was based several hours from Carder.

She’d tell him the unvarnished truth. Childhood friends tended to do that.

Blake slugged his shoulder. “You’re an idiot.”

Logan turned to his other closest friend. “What’d you do that for?”

Blake nodded back to the house where Kat had disappeared behind the front door. “She’s the one you told me about. The one who sent you into that tailspin a few years back. Isn’t she?”

“Okay, that subject is closed.”

“Fine. Why are you ignoring her? She’s gorgeous.”

Logan frowned at his friend. “You’re married.”

“Very happily, I might add, but, if Amanda were here, she’d slug you, too.”

“I haven’t done anything.”

“If this is the way you treat the women you care about, no wonder you’re single. You’re a fool.”

“Certifiable,” Deputy Parris added, his gaze narrowed.

Logan didn’t get his friends. “What are you talking about?”

“You were staring at Debra. Kat could tell.”

Logan scanned the crane, trying to hear what the workers were saying. “I was talking to her. Debra’s the coroner.”

“Kat thinks you and the good doctor were lovers,” Parris blurted out.

“What?” Logan looked back at the house, where Kat hovered at the window, watching. “How could she know—”

He flushed. “Deb and I make better friends. We just should’ve kept it that way, but, hell, I’ve known her since I was six.
We’re just friends
.”

“Then,” said Parris, “I suggest if you care about the woman who was holding your hand—before you shook it off when your ‘we-are-just-friends’ buddy showed up—that you take some time to explain it to Kat, because that lady looked mighty hurt and upset when she left.”

Logan cursed under his breath. “Kat is the mother of my children. No comparison.”

“But,” Blake interrupted, “you didn’t mention that fact when you introduced her to us. Did you?” Blake said. “I believe the romantic term used was
protection detail
.”