Sweeter Than Sin (27 page)

He frowned at her. “Just what are you talking about, Lana … I didn’t give you a choice?”

She gaped at him. “That’s what you
told
me I needed to do.”

Sighing, he reached up and tugged off his cap, running a hand back of his hair, not quite following. “Child, I don’t quite know just what you’re getting at, but I most certainly did
not
tell you that you had to leave. You…”

He stopped, shook his head. “It doesn’t matter now. It’s done. I’ll say it was harder, if you must know. Trying to figure out which way to go with you gone. David, now … he certainly refused to talk and I can understand why, but if
you
had been here, I think he would have found his courage, but you just aband—”

He made himself stop.

She had just been a girl, a girl who tried to do a brave thing and ended up being put a terrible position, where she saw terrible things. She’d been scared and she ran. He’d come to grips with that and he had no right to his anger.

Feeling the intensity of her gaze, he leaned back in his chair and studied her. Her skin was pale, drawn tight across the bones of her face, while her eyes glowed like the mist coming off the river. “What were you going to say?” she demanded, her voice all but trembling.

He remained silent.

She shoved upright and took the two steps, crossed the porch to glare at him. “What were you going to say?” she snarled.

“I don’t blame you,” he said gently. “You were scared and you ran. David thought you’d abandoned him, but after a while, he began to realize how convoluted everything had become. I honored your wishes, though.… I didn’t tell him where you were when you wrote back. He has no—”

“My wishes,” she whispered.

She stumbled, sagging against the post at her back.

Reaching up, she went to cover her face with her hands and ended up knocking her glasses askew. Swearing, she caught them in her hands and hurled them down. “I never
wrote
you,” she said, her breath coming in hard, ragged pants. “What in the
hell
is going on?”

He heard the tremor in her voice, the confusion. He felt the very same way himself.

Confusion, and the first embers of rage.

“Why don’t you tell me everything that you remember … from the time I left you that day?”

*   *   *

Lana almost told him to get fucked.

Almost.

But the look in his eyes was one that was too familiar to her.

A look like her father’s.

She might be nearly thirty-seven fricking years old, but a look from certain people just had her fighting the urge to snap to attention and go
Aye aye, sir! Yes, sir! Right away!

So instead of telling him to get fucked, she told him, exactly, what she’d been told all those years ago.

The words were practically stamped on her mind and it took nothing to bring
that
day back into clarity, even though the days that came before were lost to pain and trauma while the years after were wispy and insubstantial, lost in a fog of drugs, fear and misery.

Finally, she finished, her throat raw, like she’d been coughing up razor blades. “I didn’t know what to think, really. All I knew was that
you
wanted me gone,” she finished. “It was better for David if I was gone—he wouldn’t have to answer questions; he wouldn’t be in trouble. So I left. I’d done enough damage.”

Hearing a hoarse mumble, she looked over to the side and saw that he’d risen from his chair.

Old Max stood there, staring out over the water, his white head bent, his shoulders stooped and frail. Finally, he looked up, his blue eyes faded but still sharp. He pinned her with a hard look. “I
never
wanted you gone. The plan was for you to be here, to heal up, and be there, be steady for David, so when he was ready to go forward, you could help hold him together. He was a mess without you. And when you disappeared—”

Lana’s jaw dropped.

“What?”

He smacked his hat against his thigh.

“I trusted a friend, Lana,” he said softly, shaking his head. “This town … it had poison in it, you know that as well as I do, and I didn’t want anything bad to happen to you, not when it looked like the sheriff himself might be involved in what was going on. Not when some of the doctors were even involved. I took you to the
one
place where I thought you’d be safe while I tried to figure out the best way to help you two.… I…” He closed his eyes. “I was going to make this right. I was going to take them all down. I knew people outside this town, and they wouldn’t have been impressed by the sheriff’s contacts or Sutter’s community involvement.… We could have put a stop to it. I was a fucking blind fool. Arrogant, thinking that I could change everything.”

Lana blinked, shock rattling inside her at what he was saying. It felt like the entire past twenty years of her life had just been rewritten and she didn’t know what to say, what to think, what to feel.

Max passed a hand in front of his face, rubbed at his jaw. “One of my friends with the state police, not a local but from up in Indianapolis, had called me. That very day, when I realized you’d gone and I … hell. I had no idea what to say to him. I tried to convince David to meet with him, but David just shut down. He wouldn’t talk, not without you there. I didn’t know what to tell my contact. In the end, David decided he’d rather stay hidden. All of this because I trusted the wrong person.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, shoulders stooped and bowed, looking like he carried the weight of every one of his eighty-plus years.

“I’m going to find out just what happened, girl. I’ll find answers for you.”

“Answers,” she said, her voice hollow. “You’re going to find answers. Now. After all this time.” She shook her head. “I don’t want you to find the answers for me. I’ll find them myself. I just want to talk to David.”

He stared at her, his eyes faded but still sharp.

“Where is he?”

He arched a shaggy brow. “It’s been a long time, Lana.”

“Don’t give me that.”

He sighed, looked away. “I kept in touch with the family who took him in. I’ll reach out to them. If he wants to talk with you, he’ll get in touch.” Then his gaze cut back to hers. “But that’s not all I’m going to do. You were lied to. I was lied to. I’ll know why.”

Lana just shook her head and turned away. It wasn’t enough. Not now.

*   *   *

Caine Yoder strode out of the barn, comfortable in the darkness.

There were no lights there.

It was a new moon and the night teased with the coming hint of fall. But the Ohio Valley was something of a bitch, he’d always thought, taunting and teasing like that. It might be two more months before they saw a reprieve from the heat.

Then again, it could drop into the forties over the next week and it could be weeks or even months before they saw a day above sixty again. The weather in this part of the country was fickle, if nothing else.

He’d just finished putting away his tools when he heard the phone inside the house ringing.

He ignored it.

Whoever it was would call back if it was important.

If it wasn’t, he had no need to talk to the person anyway.

Caine Yoder’s personal number was only given out to a few people. Everybody else called the business line that he’d set up only because he worked with so many of Abraham’s family. Abraham had run the family business for many years, but his health had failed over the past few years and he had no son to pass it on to, save for Caine.

Caine didn’t want the business.

But he wouldn’t let it founder, so he did his best, because while he lacked the ability to love, if he could love he thought he would have loved Abraham.

The phone continued to ring, the shrill sound of it punctuating the night air.

Frowning, he opened the back door. It wasn’t locked. He had never gotten into the habit of locking doors. Locking doors did nothing to keep evil from the home or men’s hearts and he didn’t see the point. It wasn’t like he had much worth stealing anyway. The most valuable property he owned was the tools tucked away in his trunk or in the barn, so why bother locking his home?

Shutting the door behind him, the hot, tight air of the house wrapping around him, he moved over and stood in front of the small table and the simple rotary phone. There was no answering machine. His home had only a few electrical appliances and no air-conditioning.

Caine lived a very simple, very basic lifestyle.

The phone rang again. By his estimation, it had rung a good twenty times now.

Reaching out, he lifted it to his ear and waited. He could think of only two people who would be that persistent … and he’d just left Abraham’s house an hour ago.

“I need to speak with you,” Max Shepherd said, his voice blunt and to the point.

Caine’s lids drooped low, shielding his eyes. He really didn’t want to talk to Max. “I don’t want to speak with you.”

“I don’t give a damn, boy,” Max barked.

Caine closed his eyes, dread creeping through him. There were only so many reasons why Max might want to talk to Caine. And if it was why he thought … he had things he needed to do. “Fine. When and where?”

“I’ll be out there tomorrow as soon as I can make arrangements.”

“No. I’ll come there.” If Caine was right, then he didn’t want Max bringing that darkness out here.

“Fine. See that you do it early. This can’t wait.”

*   *   *

“Look … I just need to go through everything from the top.” Jensen fought to keep her face impassive as she sat across from Layla Chalmers.

There were some people who were just hard to like.

Layla was one of them.

Really, if Layla could lose some of the bitterness, some of the pettiness, she could do almost
anything
. Well, that and kick the drug habit. She was smart, she was beautiful and when she set her mind to it, she could accomplish things. The problem was that Layla focused all her talents on men and sex and drugs and pettiness.

A person didn’t accomplish much in life when those four things were the goals.

“We’ve already
been
through this,” Layla said, her voice truculent, her eyes locked on the table as she went at her nails with a vengeance. “I found him. He’d shit himself—do people really
do
that when they die?”

Layla looked up at Jensen, waiting.

“Certain things do happen at the time of death,” Jensen said vaguely.

“Whatever.” Layla rolled her eyes and went back to her nails. “Anyway, he’d shit himself. That’s so fucking nasty. The smell was everywhere. The house stank. I smelled it when I woke up.” She frowned and reached up, touching the knot on the back of her head. “Somebody hit me. I don’t … Anyway, I was on the floor, woke up and smelled something nasty. Came in there and saw Willie T. I knew he was dead. He had blood all over his middle, and—”

She stopped and reached up, touched her forehead. “Here. He’d been shot right here. I knew he was dead, had been for a while. I saw the note. Called nine-one-one. What more do you want to know?”

Jensen clenched her jaw, tightening her hand around the pen. But outwardly, she just gave Layla a reassuring smile. “That’s a good start, but let me ask the questions.… There are just things I need, in a certain order, okay? Like for instance … did he know you were coming over? Did anybody else know?”

Layla gave Jensen a bored look. “You think anybody would have
killed
him if they’d known I was showing up, sugar? How stupid can a person get?”

“You’d be surprised.” She shrugged and jotted down a note. “You go over to Willie T.’s a lot?”

“Some.” She jerked her shoulder in a shrug. “You’ll find the weed when you investigate. I…” She licked her lips and eyed Jensen nervously.

“Layla, I’m not interested in Willie T.’s weed or what you were doing with it.” It wasn’t like everybody in town didn’t know about her drug problem anyway. Now Willie T. might come as a bigger surprise, but Willie T. had bigger problems than being a grower of marijuana. His epitaph was going to be
I raped boys
, if Jensen’s gut was on-target. “Let’s not worry about that, okay?”

“I should get that in writing or something,” Layla said suspiciously. Then she shrugged. “Well, I’m not under arrest, so it’s not like you can
use
this or anything.”

Jensen smiled encouragingly.
Stupid woman.
If she said something incriminating, it could totally be used, but Layla hadn’t killed Willie T.

“I wanted to smoke some weed, have a drink. Willie T. is always good for that … plus…” Layla slid Jensen a sly look. “He’s … He
was
old and all, but he can get rough. Sometimes that’s fun. I was in the mood for that and I headed over there. But he didn’t answer the knock. I kept knocking and shouting for him. He didn’t answer and I thought he was being an ass. So I go to his greenhouse, thought,
I’ll show him,
and I helped myself to the stash he kept out there. He hides the plants he grows, out someplace on the grounds, but I know where he kept a good stock of it and I grabbed a joint, from the slash then headed to the back door.” She looked down, rubbed one palm against the other.

Nerves, now, bleeding through,
Jensen thought. Getting up, she got a glass of water for Layla and put it down, watching as Layla reached out and grasped at it desperately.

Her hands were trembling.

How much of that was because she needed a fix? How much was from fear?

Layla drained the glass and put it down, then got to her feet—bare feet, her toes painted blue, the polish chipped and peeling. “The back door wasn’t locked. Willie T. always has the doors locked,” Layla said, staring at the wall. “I didn’t think it was weird. Why didn’t I notice that?”

“It seems to me you’ve had a rough few days,” Jensen said, keeping her voice neutral.

Layla whipped her head around, staring at Jensen with glittering eyes.

Jensen held her gaze.

Layla sneered and started to pace again. “What the fuck ever. Anyway. I went inside, but … I don’t remember anything else until I woke up and there was that smell. Maybe there was pain, like something sudden when he hit me. It would have been a guy, right? I don’t know. But I didn’t see anything, anybody.”