Copper Lake Secrets (22 page)

It was an outrageous claim. Mark had been a spoiled brat, and there’d been no love lost between them, but
drown
her? He’d picked on her, pestered her, tormented her, but he hadn’t hated her that much.

Had he?

Because…it didn’t
feel
outrageous.

“In the creek,” Jones went on. “Where it forms a pool. You and Glen were meeting to swim, and I was with him, and we saw him holding you under, saw you fighting him. We…jumped in. Stopped Mark. Got you out.”

Slowly her arms lowered to her sides. It felt—it felt like truth. As if everything inside her remembered it even if her brain didn’t.

Mark had tried to kill her. Yeah, that would explain the memory loss, the determination to never return to Fair Winds again, cutting off contact with her father’s family. He’d tried to kill her, and her grandmother, with her talk of melodrama, never would have believed it—if Reece had even bothered to tell her—and her grandfather… He’d probably given Mark tips on how to succeed the next time.

Numbly she went to the chair Jones had vacated and sank down with a creak of wicker. Just a few minutes ago, she’d felt safe in this chair, just as she had all those years ago with Daddy. Now…

She raised her dull gaze to Jones’s. “Who is Glen?”

Anguish crossed his face, then disappeared. “My brother. He and I were camping out there near the cemetery. We ran into you one day on our way to the river. You were hurt and scared and so sad, and he always liked fixing things—machines, animals, people—so…he was your friend.”

“Where is he now?”

The stark emotion flashed again. Her hand lifted, her fingers reaching out to comfort him, but there was too much distance between them, and she couldn’t bring herself to close it.

“I think he’s dead,” he said in a monotone that hinted at how deep that thought hurt him. “I think that blood on the tarp we found is his.”

Dead. Murdered. Right here at Fair Winds. By her grandfather.

Dear God.

She pressed her hand to her mouth, as if that could stop the sickening thoughts, but words spilled out, anyway. “You think—you’re here—you think we might find his body. That’s why you’re here. That’s why—” Helplessly, she waved a trembling hand at the lawn.

He continued in that flat, hard voice. “A few weeks ago, Glen’s belongings were found hidden back there in the woods, just off Howard property. I left without him that summer. I figured he was out there somewhere living his life, just like me, until I heard that news. I came here hoping to find something, to learn something. When your grandmother asked me to redo the gardens, it was too convenient. I couldn’t refuse.”

Of course not. It gave him a reason to hang around and ask questions. And she just happened to choose the same time to come back herself. What lousy luck.
Or,
whispered Martine’s voice in her head,
was it fate?

“You could have told me,” she said, accusation heavy in her tone.

“Not at first. I didn’t know what you might say to your grandmother. I didn’t trust you.”

Reece smiled grimly as the rain poured harder. She was the one famous for trust issues; she feared betrayal and abandonment and disillusionment, and yet he hadn’t trusted her. Ironic.

“So you didn’t trust me at first. Do you now?”

“Would I have spent last night with you if I hadn’t?”

Some pettiness inside her wanted to retort that she didn’t know since he was so obviously good at keeping secrets, but she knew better. Last night hadn’t been just sex. They’d both had their share of casual sex, and they both knew the difference.

“So why didn’t you tell me sooner? Once you decided I was trustworthy, why didn’t you say something?”

He crouched in front of her chair, the column at his back. “I tried last night. But you said, ‘Make me forget everything else in the world but you and me.’ And I wanted that, too, so…”

That sounds like the start to more serious conversation, and I can’t do it anymore tonight.
She’d meant the words with all her heart. If he’d insisted, if he’d told her any of this then, she would have had a meltdown right there on his sofa, and even he might not have been able to put her back together.

His gaze was steady, intense. Though he was trying not to show too much emotion, it was there in his eyes: sorrow, anger, regret, concern—and that concern was for her.
He’s a good guy,
Evie had told her.
In spite of everything.

Something else Evie had said flashed into her mind.
Do you remember him?
Had Evie known in her woo-woo way that Jones was connected to her past? Probably.

She didn’t remember him. But he and his brother would have been the only friendly people in her life fifteen years ago. Maybe that knowledge somewhere deep inside her explained why she’d so quickly come to feel comfortable with him. To trust him.

“So this thing between us…”

A little of the tension around his mouth eased. “Would have happened no matter where or when we met again.”

“
If
we met again.”

He shook his head. “When.”

She was considering the possibility that everything in their lives had happened in order to bring them together, that they were meant to be. That when Daddy had said he and Valerie were meant to be, it hadn’t just been a romantic notion but a fact of life. Even for someone who believed in fate—most of the time—it was an enormous idea to take in.

“I wasn’t honest with you from the start, Reece, but I like you a whole lot.” His mouth quirked. “I think I’m falling in love with you. Whatever happens here, I still want to see you. Be with you. Be a part of your life.”

Honesty forced her to admit that she wanted to be with him, too. She wanted at least a fair chance to have a normal relationship with a good guy—with
this
good guy. She wanted to see if she was falling in love with him, too. All her emotions suggested so, but she’d never trusted any man enough to risk her heart, so it was a totally new experience for her.

And she did trust Jones. Even though he’d misled her.

She gazed past him to the flower bed, where the rain flooded out crevices and puddled and washed away much of the work they’d done, then slowly brought her gaze back to him. “I’ve always had an interest in gardening.”

She saw by his expression that he understood the reference to his earlier words:
Ideally, I’d want a wife who shared my interest in the business.
Tension drained from him, and he rocked forward onto his knees. “I’ve always had an interest in New Orleans.”

“You would visit me there?”

His hand closed around hers, and he eased to his feet, drawing her with him as he stood, holding her close. “Honey, I’d relocate there. I’m no fool. I don’t want a long-distance relationship. Always saying goodbye, sleeping alone, waiting to see you again? It might have worked for my parents and grandparents, but not for me.”

She wrapped her arms tightly around his neck and felt…peace. Welcome. As if she’d come home.

Chapter 11

J
ones was still holding her, his cheek pressed against her hair, his eyes closed, his gut taut with gratitude, when the air around them crackled. The hairs on his neck stood on end an instant before lightning struck the nearest live oak alongside the driveway. The sound was deafening, the scent crisp. He looked up in time to see a massive branch explode from the tree and across the road, leaving a charred, ragged wound on the ancient trunk.

Still in the circle of his arms, Reece twisted to face the tree, her nose wrinkling at the smell of ozone. “Wow.”

“That tree’s taken its hits.” He let go long enough to point out an old scar a few feet from the new one. “It lost a big branch there, too, at some time.”

“When I was here.” She said the words casually, but the instant they registered with her, her body stiffened and her next words came slowly, hesitantly. “Right after I came. It was the first thunderstorm since I’d arrived, in the middle of the night. The lightning strike woke me. The windows in my room were open, and that smell… I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know what had happened.”

Jones could imagine her, already unhappy in this place, getting jerked from sleep by a violent storm and with no one to turn to—no father to hold her and tell her silly stories, no mother to comfort her, no caring grandmother to tuck her back into bed.

“I got up to close the windows, and then I stood at the front window and watched. The lightning was constant, lighting up the entire sky, so bright sometimes that it made my eyes hurt, and the thunder went on and on until it felt like it was inside me. I was about to get back in bed and pull the covers over my head when I saw…”

She was silent so long. His mouth close to her ear, he quietly prompted her. “What did you see, Reece?”

She eased away from him and walked to the first step. “Grandfather. It was pouring rain, and he was carrying something over his shoulder, something heavy wrapped up. He carried the—the—it over into the yard—” she pointed west of the second flower bed “—and laid it down and picked up a shovel and began covering it.”

Stopping beside her, Jones watched her hand tremble in the air before wrapping his fingers around hers. Her skin was clammy, the shivers so strong that they vibrated through his own hand. Slowly he lowered their hands, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was staring fifteen years distant into the rain, her cheeks pale, her voice losing strength, reminding him of the girl she’d been then.

“I watched until he was finished. He took the shovel and disappeared around the house again. I was always too curious, Valerie said. I wanted to know what was so important that he’d had to bury it in the middle of the night in a terrible storm. So the next morning, I went out front to look. Before he’d dug the—the hole, he’d cut the grass out in big squares, then pieced it back together. Grandmother wouldn’t have noticed. I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been looking for it.”

He could see the scene easily: the bright, sharp-edged light that followed a cleansing storm, the air as damp as the ground, the sad little girl with the pixie haircut sneaking out of the house, curious but totally clueless about the aftershock of what she was about to do.

“I got a stick that had blown off in the storm, and I was crouched there, poking this stick into the ground, when Grandfather caught me. He lifted me off the ground and said, ‘If you ever tell anyone…’”

Anger roiled through Jones at the old man for terrifying his granddaughter. Relief that the body she’d watched him bury couldn’t have been Glen’s, since it occurred before they’d arrived at Fair Winds. Revulsion that Arthur Howard must have killed more than once. Concern about how Reece would bear this.

“The next time I came outside again after that, the first thing I did after making sure Grandfather was gone was stand at the bottom of these steps and pace off the distance to the—the grave. Twelve steps out and twenty-six to the right. I was terrified of him and angry with him and one day I was going to find out what he’d buried and show everyone.”

She looked at him, her eyes glittery with uncried tears and a faint, unhappy smile on her lips. “That’s why I count.”

The rain still fell, easier now, but the lightning had passed and the thunder was nothing more than an occasional rumble. He’d worked in the rain before, for far less important reasons.

For a long time they stared at each other, and finally she nodded. “You get the shovel. I’ll count. I’m good at it.”

He retrieved a shovel and gloves from the tools covered with a tarp near the drive. When he returned, she’d already taken the first twelve steps and was walking north. “How tall were you when you were thirteen?”

She held up one finger, took a dozen more steps, then stopped. “I don’t remember, but I was the tallest kid in my class.” Opening her arms, she faced the house. “This is thirty-eight steps for me now. Do you want to allow for shorter legs?”

“Just a little.” He sank the shovel into the dirt a few feet closer to the house. It went easily through the first couple waterlogged inches, then required more effort.

How deep did a monster dig when he was burying a body in his own front yard? At least two feet. More than three?

Soaked within minutes, he dug a decent-size hole to three feet. A years-old skeleton didn’t make much of a target, so after a few more scoops, he moved again at an angle to the house and started over. He’d stopped to sluice his hair back from his face when Reece asked, “What if it wasn’t a body? What if there’s nothing left of whatever it was to find?”

“What else would he bury in the middle of the night in a storm?” He muscled the shovel into the dirt, tossed out a scoop of mud sitting atop dry dirt, then stomped it in one more time.

It hit something solid.

His jaw clenched, his fingers knotted on the handle, he loosened the dirt in the area, dropped to his knees and shoved his hand into the hole. About two feet down, he found the object, long and cylindrical, worked it free of the loosened soil, then brought it out.

He recoiled, dropping it to the ground, then swiping his muddy glove on his jeans. Reece didn’t show such dismay, instead kneeling in front of him and gently picking it up. “It’s a bone. Too short for a leg.” She held it alongside her own arm, several inches shorter, and studied it before looking at him. “An arm?”

One nod. That was all he could manage.

“We should call—” Sliding his gloves off, he patted his pocket where he normally kept his cell, but of course it wasn’t there. He’d left it on the charger in the cottage, where he’d left Mick, too, asleep on the couch. Reece didn’t have hers, either. Her wet clothes were plastered to her body, making that obvious.

“You shouldn’t have disturbed the dead.”

The voice came from behind them, the tone as friendly as if he’d simply commented on the weather. Reece’s fingers clenched tightly on the bone as Jones stood, then turned. The Jaguar was parked in the driveway, just short of the fallen limb, and Mark was striding toward them.