The Legend of Smuggler's Cave (5 page)

But why? She wasn’t in the middle of a custody battle. Johnny’s family saw Logan as much as they cared to, which wasn’t that often, and none of them had shown any sign of wanting to change the custody situation. She certainly had no money or possessions to offer as ransom, and anyone who could sneak through the woods quietly enough that she hadn’t heard them coming would surely know that much about her financial situation.

Yet she couldn’t change the facts of what had happened outside tonight. She couldn’t forget the way one of the men had tugged so ferociously at Logan that she’d been terrified, for a heart-stopping moment before the shots rang out, that she would lose her grip on her son and he’d be spirited away, lost from her forever.

“Do you think Johnny could have been working for Cortland?” Dana asked.

Briar had been pondering that question ever since Dalton had raised it at the hospital. Was it possible? She knew Johnny’s truck route included Travisville, Virginia, where Cortland Lumber had been located before an explosion destroyed the place not long after Johnny’s murder. It was obviously how Johnny had met the woman Dalton Hale believed Johnny had been sleeping with.

But could the man she’d married, the man she’d loved since she was fifteen years old, have gotten involved in the kind of violence and murder Wayne Cortland and his crew of drug dealers, gunrunners and anarchists had spread through the hills for the past couple of years?

The last few years of their marriage had left Briar with few illusions about her childhood sweetheart. He was a better liar than she’d ever credited him to be, and, sadly, she suspected Dalton was probably right about the affair. There’d been other infidelities, as well.

But crossing the line into extortion and murder? Could she really picture Johnny doing such a thing?

She didn’t want to believe it. But something had driven a couple of ruthless intruders to her home for two nights in a row.

“I don’t know,” she answered finally. “But I mean to find out.”

* * *

“S
O
,
WHY
ARE
you here, anyway?”

Dalton turned his gaze from the head-to-head huddle between Briar Blackwood and Walker Nix, meeting Dana Massey’s wary gaze. He shrugged. “Just passing by.”

“Convenient timing,” she murmured.

“Do you have something you want to say to me? Spit it out.”

Dana’s lips pressed to a tight line. “I know you hate me right now.”

“
Hate
is far too loaded a word,” he said quietly. “I don’t hate you. I don’t know you well enough to feel anything that strong for you.”

“And you don’t want to.”

He shrugged. “Biology isn’t destiny.”

“Clearly.” She pinned him with a long, cool look and moved away.

With a sigh, Dalton looked back at the two cops locked in low conversation on the sofa. From what little he’d overheard of their discussion, Nix seemed to be asking Briar most of the same questions he’d asked Dalton. He hoped Briar was able to fill in more blanks for the detective than he had.

The noise of Briar’s Jeep passing close by had jarred him from a doze, but it had taken him several seconds more to drag himself to full consciousness. Several seconds more to see the hulking shadows slinking into the clearing from the woods nearby, and more seconds still to realize that he was watching an ambush unfold. He’d looked away for several seconds to retrieve the rifle and set himself up to fire a warning shot.

In truth, he’d seen little of what had gone on between Briar and her assailants. The one thing he remembered, the one element of the attack that had stuck in his head after the rest had faded into chaos, was how desperately she’d held on to her little boy when one of the attackers had tried to wrest him away.

Clearly, Logan meant everything to her.

The boy was asleep on the sofa beside Briar, curled up under a crocheted throw. Dana had offered to take him to his bed, but Briar hadn’t wanted to let him out of her sight. Dalton wondered how she would handle it the next evening when she had to leave him with someone so she could work her patrol shift.

He could solve that problem for her, he realized, the solution weaving itself into place in his sleep-deprived mind. Staying here at this cabin, in the middle of nowhere, only made her and her son more vulnerable to further attacks. Attempts, he corrected himself silently. Tonight hadn’t been an attack so much as an attempt to steal Logan away from her.

The question was, why?

Chapter Five

The front door opened without a knock, and Doyle Massey walked in, his eyes widening as he spotted Dalton. Briar watched warily, prepared to jump in if crisis prevention was needed, but Doyle simply let his gaze slide past his half brother and crossed to where Nix and Briar sat. Dana moved from her standing position by the fireplace to join them.

“What’s he doing here?” Doyle asked quietly.

“He witnessed the attack,” Briar answered in a tone that didn’t invite further questions.

Doyle tipped her chin up with his forefinger to get a good look at the bruises on her throat. “Are you and Logan okay?”

“We’re fine.”

He gave a little wave of his hand toward her injury. “Anybody look at that?”

“I did. In the mirror,” she answered flatly. “Just bruises.”

Doyle glanced at Nix, as if seeking a second opinion. Nix gave a shrug. Doyle looked back at Briar, his eyes hooded in thought. Then he looked at Dalton Hale across the room and gestured with his head for Dalton to join them. He moved aside to make room for Dalton to join the circle.

Briar glanced up at the county prosecutor, curious to see his reaction to Doyle’s silent command. His gaze met hers briefly, then turned toward the chief, who had begun to speak.

“It’s too dark for a search party to do us any good.” Doyle’s voice lost its earlier gentleness. This was his police-business voice. “Neither of you recognized the two men. No soft ground to allow for footprints. Briar said both men wore gloves, so looking for prints is pointless.”

“Are you saying there’s nothing you can do to find those guys?” Dalton looked frustrated. “You don’t think for a second they’ll stop trying, do you?”

“What do you think they want?” Doyle asked him.

“I wasn’t here last night, so I can’t be sure about what motivated those particular intruders,” he answered, his tone measured. “But tonight what I saw was two men trying to take Mrs. Blackwood’s son out of her arms. They came here for the boy.”

Briar couldn’t stop a soft groan from escaping her sore throat at Dalton’s confirmation of her worst fear. She’d known the truth the second the man outside her Jeep tried to pull Logan from her arms.

They had come here tonight to take her son.

“I wish I could say I had enough officers available to post a twenty-four-hour guard here,” Doyle told her.

She looked up at him. “I know you can’t.”

“You can move in with me,” Nix said.

“No.” Dalton shook his head. “Don’t you live in a shack in the woods? You think it’ll be any safer than this place?”

“It’s not a shack,” Nix said defensively, but Briar could see that Dalton’s words had hit a nerve.

“Do you have a better idea?” Dana asked.

“I do.” Dalton took a deep breath, then spoke in a rush, as if he was afraid he wouldn’t make it all the way through. “Mrs. Blackwood and her son should come stay with me.”

* * *

A
FTER
THE
BRIEFEST
of stunned pauses, a chorus of
nos
greeted Dalton’s offer. From Nix, from Doyle, even from Dana.

But not, Dalton noted with surprise, from Briar.

She just looked at him thoughtfully, her head slightly cocked, as if by changing her perspective she might be able to discern some hidden aspect of his character that had eluded her to this point.

“Before yesterday at the hospital, I doubt you could have pointed out Briar in a crowd.” Nix’s tone was barely civil. “And now you want to take her and Logan home with you? What’s your game?”

“Nix.” Briar put her hand on his arm, stepping between him and Dalton. She looked up at Dalton, that same speculative look in her eyes. “Could the rest of you leave us alone a minute?”

“Briar, this isn’t a good idea,” Doyle said.

“I’m not going to hurt her.” Dalton winced inwardly at the hint of injury in his voice. As if Doyle’s distrust actually meant anything to him. Which was ridiculous, of course. He owed these people nothing, and he sure as hell didn’t care what either of the Massey siblings thought of him.

“Come on.” It was Dana who stepped forward and tugged the other two men with her toward the front door. She led them out onto the front porch, shooting Dalton a considering look before closing the door behind them.

“What are you up to?” Briar asked.

“I’m trying to keep you and your son alive.”

“Nix is right. Two days ago you didn’t have a clue who I was.”

“Not entirely true,” he disagreed. “For nearly a month now, I’ve learned almost everything there is to know about you, on paper, at least.”

She looked faintly horrified by his answer. “You’ve been checking up on me? Do you realize how invasive that is?”

“It’s my job. You were a person of interest in a case I’m trying to put together against a multistate criminal enterprise.”

Her chin stabbed the air between them. “I have nothing to do with Wayne Cortland or anyone who worked for him.”

“Your cousin Blake worked for him.”

“And I haven’t had anything to do with Blake since we were both kids.”

“Which I now know because of the background check,” he pointed out in what he thought was a perfectly reasonable tone.

But she looked anything but mollified. “I haven’t had the opportunity to return the favor.” Acid burned the edges of her voice. “I don’t know anything about you but what I’ve read in the newspapers and heard from some very good folks you’ve treated like garbage for the past few weeks. And you want me to move my son out of the only home he’s ever known and into yours? What’s in it for you, Mr. Hale?”

“A chance at salvaging what little there is left of my life,” he answered before he could stop the bitter words. He stared at her in consternation for a moment before he turned away, raking his fingers through his hair.

After a long silent moment, he felt her hand close over his arm. “I know you’ve been kicked in the teeth with this whole mess. And I’m real sorry about that. You didn’t deserve to be lied to that way all your life. Your daddy and especially your granddaddy let you down something awful. And I can’t hold it against you that you want to punch a hole in the world for the wrong it’s done you.”

He wanted to shake her hand off, to disconnect himself from the warm, gentle weight of her touch. But God help him, nobody had touched him with such compassion in what felt like forever.

His mother was barely holding herself together. His father couldn’t bear to look at him anymore, so ashamed was he of his part in the lies and crimes. His grandfather refused to admit to his guilt, choosing self-preserving silence over justice and truth.

All the trouble his grandfather had gone to in order to keep his mother from learning that the son she’d prayed so long to have had died—what good had it done? The truth always came out. Pete Sutherland had been the man who’d taught Dalton that truth years ago as a child.

Had he really thought he could keep this particular truth buried forever?

Dalton hadn’t been in his grandfather’s position that day at Maryville Mercy Hospital. He hadn’t walked into his daughter’s room to find his grandson dead in his crib. Maybe the times, the situation, the emotions had all conspired to push Pete Sutherland into the choice he’d made.

But Dalton just couldn’t imagine himself taking another woman’s baby in order to protect his daughter from pain, regardless of the circumstances, because at best, it was a stalling tactic.

Old Pete hadn’t saved his daughter any pain. He’d just pushed it thirty-seven years into the future, after years of lies and schemes and even crimes that made the truth exponentially uglier than it had been that day on the maternity ward at Maryville Mercy. Dalton couldn’t turn to Doyle or Dana, even though they’d both indicated, at the beginning, at least, that they would welcome the chance to know him. They couldn’t understand what it was like to look at them and see not family but the source of his pain, the strangers who’d blown into town and blown up his world.

It wasn’t fair or right. He knew it wasn’t. But he couldn’t figure out how to stop thinking of them as the enemy.

“What do you want from me?” Briar asked quietly, turning him toward her until he had no choice but to look at her.

There wasn’t pity in her gaze, as he’d feared. She looked at him with a mixture of curiosity and, strangely, a hint of understanding.

“I want to bury the Cortland organization once and for all,” he answered after gathering his wits. “I want them gone from these hills for good.”

“Because you think it’s the only thing that will make folks around here forget your family scandal and pull the lever for you in the voting booth.”

He shook her hand from his arm and turned away in anger. Not because she’d insulted him but because she was partially right. It might not be his only motive for wanting to see justice done, but it was a big part of it. Maybe too big a part of it.

“I’m not sayin’ I won’t help you,” she said as the silence filling the space between them threatened to smother him. “I just want to be clear on our motives. You want to be elected County Prosecutor. I want to protect my son, and if you’re right about Johnny, I want to make right what he did. And I wouldn’t mind solving his murder so my son won’t have to wonder about all that in years to come.”

“I don’t think it will be enough to save my ambitions,” he said quietly. “But I want the job anyway.”

“You could make more money in private practice,” she murmured.

He shot her a baleful look, unable to stop his reaction. “I don’t care about the money.”

“Everybody cares about the money. I know I do.” She waved her hand around the cabin. “You think I live here because I like a drafty cabin with a sometimes-leaky roof? You think I can my own food and kill my own game because I’m part of some organic whole-food locavore movement?” She shook her head. “I live here because it’s paid for. I grow and kill my own food because it’s cheaper that way, and it allows me to put money away so Logan can go to college and get the hell out of these mountains if that’s what he wants. Money matters.”

He rubbed his jaw, wondering how many different ways he could make this woman despise him in one short night. “I have all the money I need. You must know that. I have the luxury of choosing a job because it satisfies something more than my bank account.”

“Lucky you.” She turned away, crossing to the sofa and sitting next to her sleeping son. She gently circled her palm over his back, lowering her voice. “I don’t have that luxury. I have to work so we can eat. And I can’t afford to put him in day care. Aunt Jenny won’t be able to watch him for a while, so you see, I’m in a really desperate situation at the moment.”

He waited, realizing she was on the verge of making a decision. Anything he said at this point would probably hurt his chances of getting what he wanted. And though she might not believe it, one of the things he wanted more than anything in the world was to protect her and her son from going through another night like tonight.

She looked up at him. “I would do anything to protect Logan.”

“I know.”

“I know you know. That’s why you’re offering to take us in. You know I’d never even consider it otherwise.”

He waited, keeping silent. The moment stretched to the breaking point.

“I’ll do it.” She looked down at her little boy. “But I have some conditions of my own.”

He moved slowly toward her, settling on the end of the scuffed pine coffee table in front of the sofa. “What conditions?”

“You let me pay rent.”

“It’s not necessary.”

“I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for me.”

Pride, he thought, not without admiration. “I need your cooperation, not your money. It’s far more valuable to me.”

Her gaze snapped up to meet his. “You’ll have my cooperation. Matter of fact, I insist on being part of your investigation.”

“You already have a job.”

“I have time off, too. And I’ll spend what I can of that helping you with your investigation. But I get to see everything in your files.”

He wasn’t sure that condition was even possible to meet. “It’s an open investigation—”

“And I’m a Bitterwood police officer. It’s a condition of my agreement. I get to see all the files. I might recognize a clue you wouldn’t.”

He released a sigh. “Okay. But you have to tell me everything you can remember about your late husband’s time with Davenport Trucking.”

He could see the idea made her uncomfortable, but she finally gave a swift nod and extended her hand toward him. “Agreed.”

He took her outstretched hand, closing his fingers over hers. Her handshake was firm and businesslike, her palm dry and callused. He felt a sudden unexpected surge of anger at the feel of that small tough hand rasping against his. God only knew how hard a life she’d lived, trying to make a future for her son. How many more years of struggling and saving still lay ahead of her. The thought of those sons of bitches out there trying to rip her son away from her for who knew what reason—

He caught himself before his rage reached full throttle. There was a lot about her life he couldn’t change. But he could do this one thing. He could make the next few weeks of her life as comfortable and secure as he could.

“Let me tell the others,” she suggested, releasing his hand and pushing to her feet. “Watch Logan for me?”

He stared after her as she stepped out to the porch and closed the door behind her, realizing what an honor she’d just bestowed on him by trusting him to watch her child alone, even for a few moments with her so close by.

He looked down at the sleeping boy, carefully flattening his hand against his warm, flannel-clad back. He was so tiny, so breakable, Dalton thought, holding his breath as he felt the child’s rib cage expand and contract with his slow, deep respirations. And tonight someone had tried to rip him out of his mother’s arms, for reasons they still hadn’t quite figured out.

“Nobody’s going to take you away from your mama,” he whispered, his own breathing falling into rhythm with the boy’s. “Not on my watch.”

* * *

P
OKE
,
POKE
,
POKE
.