THE SECRET OF CHEROKEE COVE (2 page)

The beam of Nix’s flashlight scanned across the bloodied features of her brother Doyle.

Oh, God, please no.

Her brother’s eyes opened, squinting against the flashlight beam. She felt her knees wobble and grabbed the first thing she could wrap her hand around—Nix’s arm. “Doyle?”

Her brother’s gaze met hers, and he forced a smile that looked more like a grimace. “About time you got here. I’m an hour late for my own engagement party, and nobody thinks to come looking for me?”

She nearly drooped with relief, dropping her hand from Nix’s arm. Doyle sounded as if he was in pain, but his sense of humor was still in play. That had to be a good sign, right?

“How bad are you hurt?” Nix asked, shining the light toward the floor of the cab. Dana could see that one of Doyle’s legs was broken. Grimacing, she looked back at his face, trying to figure out where the blood was coming from.

“Broken leg,” Doyle growled. “My head is bleeding, but I haven’t lost consciousness, so I don’t think it’s bad. My seat belt saved me from going through the window.”

“Where’s your cell phone?” Dana asked as Nix backed away to call in the accident.

“Somewhere on the floorboard. I tried to get it but...” He waved at his broken leg. “I decided I wasn’t about to bleed out and could wait for help to find me. Although I have to admit, I was about to get desperate enough to risk wiggling around again to find the phone.”

“Rescue’s on the way, Chief.” Nix walked back over to the wreck. “What did you hit?”

“The bridge abutment.” Doyle waved his right hand backward, groaning as the movement apparently shifted his broken leg.

“Be still, idiot.” Dana softened her words with a gentle squeeze of his shoulder.

He looked up at her. “Call Laney, will you?” he asked. “She’s probably worried.”

“Okay.” Dana stepped away and pulled out her cell phone, dialing Laney’s number.

Laney answered on the first ring. “Dana?”

“He’s been in an accident, but he’s alive and making jokes.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nix bend in to hear whatever Doyle was saying. Gritting her teeth against the flare of curiosity, she gave Laney a quick rundown of Doyle’s injuries. “Rescue’s on the way.”

“Why couldn’t he call?” Laney asked, sounding suspicious, as if she thought Dana wasn’t telling her the whole truth.

“His cell phone fell on the floor, and with his broken leg, he couldn’t stand the pain of trying to reach it.”

“I want to talk to him,” Laney said. “Please?”

Dana knew if she’d been in Laney’s shoes, she’d have demanded the same thing. She took the phone over to her brother.

Nix backed out, not meeting her gaze, giving her room to hand over the phone to Doyle. “Laney wants to talk to you,” she told him.

As Doyle reassured Laney that he’d live, Dana crossed to Nix, who was shining his flashlight on the road behind the wreck. “What are you looking for?”

He didn’t answer, turning the light back toward the truck lying on its side.

“I’m a federal agent,” she said quietly. “And I’m Doyle’s sister.”

“You’re on vacation, and he’s my boss.”

“What did he tell you while I was calling Laney?”

“He just went over what he remembers of the accident.”

Such a dodge, she thought. “Which was what?”

Nix’s dark eyes turned toward her, gleaming darkly in the reflection of the flashlight beam off the cracked windshield. “He hit the bridge abutment.”

“I heard that much.” She took the flashlight from his hand and aimed the beam toward the bridge visible about thirty yards behind the wreck. It was a truss bridge, not particularly long, but the land fell away precipitously beyond the nearest edge, and a quick hike down the road revealed why. The bridge stood over a deep gorge, at least a thirty-foot drop, with a narrow ribbon of water reflecting starlight below.

If Doyle had missed the abutment and gone over the edge into the gorge...

She shuddered and walked back toward the truck, stopping midway as a sudden thought occurred to her.

“Detective Nix, what’s the name of this bridge?” She turned the flashlight toward him, centering the beam on his face so she could read his expression.

He squinted, angling his face away from the light. “Purgatory Bridge.”

Dana’s heart dipped. She turned slowly and ran the flashlight beam over the delicate ironwork of the bridge, blinking back a sudden burn of tears. She’d crossed this bridge earlier on her way into town. Passed over it without a thought.

Never realizing she’d crossed over the place of her parents’ deaths.

She made her way slowly back to the wreck, schooling her features until she was certain her emotions didn’t show. She gave the flashlight back to Nix and bent to look in on her brother. He’d finished his conversation with Laney and sat with his hands folded over his chest, clutching her cell phone in his bloodstained fingers.

“You doing okay?” she asked softly.

He looked up, handing over the phone. “Laney wanted to come down here, but I told her to stay put until I find out where the EMTs want to ship me.”

Dana glanced at Nix and found him watching them, his expression unreadable. With a sigh, she bent closer to her brother. “What really happened, Doyle? You’re a good driver. You didn’t just run into a bridge.”

He met her gaze, a hint of apology in his green eyes. “And it’s your vacation, too,” he murmured.

“What happened?”

Closing his eyes, he laid his head against the headrest. “The brakes failed.”

A ripple of dread snaked through her. “How long since you had them replaced?”

He rolled his head and opened his eyes to look at her. “Last week.”

Nix’s voice rumbled behind her, grim as the grave. “Someone tampered with his brakes.”

Chapter Two

“Have there been any overt threats?”

Nix looked up at Dana Massey, wondering if she was ever going to run out of restless energy and stop pacing a hole in the waiting-room floor. He’d taken pity on Laney Hanvey, who looked as if she was close to snapping as it was, and removed Doyle’s sister to the other end of the waiting area, where she could walk the floor to her heart’s content.

“No overt threats,” Nix answered when she stopped in front of him, a belligerent look in her mist-green eyes. “But he’s not without enemies.”

She sank into a chair across from him, as if she’d run out of gas. Stretching her long legs in front of her, she dipped her chin to her chest and looked at him beneath a fringe of dark eyelashes. “So Merritt Cortland is alive, then.”

“Can’t be sure of that.”

“He has the strongest motive.”

Nix nodded. “But not the only motive.”

“Who else?”

“We haven’t yet figured out who else from the police department Cortland might have had on his payroll. The closer we look, the more feathers we ruffle.”

“Whose feathers?”

What did she think she was going to do, go run down every police department employee who ever grumbled about the new chief’s campaign of cleaning out all vestiges of corruption? There wouldn’t be much of a force left. Even those who’d never thought a minute about taking money from Cortland resented being under constant scrutiny. Nix certainly did.

But he knew it was necessary, so he dealt with it. Others in the department weren’t quite as sanguine.

“Everybody gets tired of being a suspect,” Nix answered.

“Too bad.”

He smiled a little at that. “You must be popular with your fellow marshals.”

The withering look she shot his way might have stung a lesser man. But Nix shrugged it off. She was tense and upset. And she was clearly a woman of action, so sitting around waiting for someone else to solve the mystery of the tampered brakes had to be driving her crazy.

Ivy Calhoun had volunteered to go with the vehicle to the garage, leaving Nix to stay with the chief. Massey had asked him to stick close. Nix suspected he wanted someone there at the hospital to protect Laney and Dana.

Not that Dana needed a knight in shining armor. He’d put his money on her in a fair fight.

“Doyle wanted me to go home for the night.” She tried to hide it, but Nix heard a hint of hurt behind the words.

“Not a bad idea. The doctors have already told you he’ll live, and they’ve sedated him for the fracture reduction, so he’s probably not going to be able to talk to you again before morning.”

She winced a little at the term “fracture reduction,” the kind of pain-filled grimace that told him she’d suffered a break or two in her time. Not surprising, considering she chased fugitives for a living. “I just worry he’s in danger.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Nix said.

Her eyes narrowed. “And to keep an eye on Laney while he’s unconscious?”

He should have known she’d figure it out. “That’s my guess.”

She pushed out of her slump. “I haven’t said ‘thanks.’”

“For what? Putting on the brakes in time to keep from smashing into the wreck?”

“For taking the initiative to go look for him in the first place.”

“If I hadn’t, someone else would have.” He nodded toward her. “You were already thinking about it, weren’t you?”

“Just say ‘you’re welcome.’”

He felt a smile crack his face. “You’re welcome.”

The smile she shot back at him came complete with shiny white teeth and a set of dimples that took ten years off her age. “I don’t suppose you could give me directions back to Bitterwood?”

He pulled out his notebook and sketched a quick map for her. “Where are you staying?”

“I told Doyle I’d stay at his place. It’s closer than my hotel.”

He wondered if that was a good idea. If someone had gone after Doyle’s truck, they might have booby-trapped his house, too.

“I’ll be careful,” she said, correctly interpreting his expression. She was better at reading him than she had a right to be. He’d often prided himself on being inscrutable.

“Okay.” He pointed at the map. “This is Old Purgatory Road. Here’s the bridge. Cross the bridge and go about a mile past Smoky Joe’s Saloon, then take a right on Laurel Road. The chief’s house is at the end of the road. Can’t miss it.”

She waved the sketch at him. “Nice map. Thanks again.”

He almost shrugged off her thanks, but remembering her earlier admonition, he put on his best “plays well with others” face and said, “You’re welcome. Again.”

Ah, there came the dimples. Worth the price of admission.

She passed a pair of new arrivals on the way out, speaking to them quietly before she left. It took Nix a second to place them—Natalie and J. D. Cooper, the chief’s friends from Alabama. The redhead nodded a greeting and sat across from Nix in the seat Dana had just vacated. Her husband settled in the chair beside her.

“Detective Nix, right?” Natalie asked by way of a greeting.

Nix nodded.

“Have you seen Doyle since he arrived here?”

“Just briefly when he came in.”

“Any idea what caused the accident?”

Nix wasn’t sure he was authorized to comment on what was now an ongoing investigation.

Apparently his poker face needed more work than he realized, for Natalie’s brow furrowed. “It wasn’t an accident, was it?”

Nix cleared his throat. “I can’t really comment.”

Natalie and her husband exchanged looks. “We’ll just ask Doyle and he’ll tell us.”

“That may be,” Nix agreed. “But that’s between the chief and you.”

Natalie’s eyes flashed with irritation, but her husband put a hand on her arm. His touch seemed to settle her. “Fair enough,” she said finally. “How did he look when you saw him?”

“Kind of a bloody mess,” Nix admitted. “Had a gash on the side of his head that needed stitches, but Doyle said he hadn’t lost consciousness, so it looks like the worst of his injuries will be a broken leg.” The chief’s condition was really more than Nix should have shared with the Coopers, but given his reticence on the nature of the accident, he decided it wouldn’t hurt to share a little news that they could get with a phone call to Dana Massey. She hadn’t told them about the brake tampering on her way out, however, so he’d keep that information to himself.

“He’s a good guy. A good cop,” Natalie said, her tone a little defensive.

“Yes, ma’am,” Nix agreed.

Her eyes narrowed at his polite tone, but if she thought he was patronizing her, she didn’t say so. He wasn’t, really. The chief
was
a good guy and, despite his jovial, laid-back management style, he’d already proved himself to be a good cop.

Whether being a good guy and a good cop would be enough to unravel decades of bad practices, indifference and systematic corruption at the Bitterwood P.D. was a question that had yet to be answered.

* * *

D
OYLE
’
S
NEW
HOME
turned out to be a two-story log cabin nestled in a small, wooded hollow at the end of Laurel Road. It looked like one of those fancy tourists’ cabins you could find a dime a dozen in the Smokies, with names like Eagle’s Nest, Black Bear Lodge and Creekview. A large gravel parking area in front of the house suggested that at one time, at least, the cabin had been used for that very purpose.

A wide wooden porch with rustic log rails spanned the front of the house. After retrieving her suitcase and overnight bag from the trunk of her Chevy, she climbed the three shallow steps to the porch and pulled the keys Doyle had given her from the pocket of her jacket.

Seconds from sliding the key into the lock, she heard a noise from inside the cabin.

She fumbled behind her back for her Glock 17 and remembered, with frustration, that she’d packed it in her overnight bag, not wanting to be armed at her brother’s engagement party. Setting the bag down as quietly as she could, she crouched and worked open the side zipper, where she’d put her empty Glock and a pair of loaded magazines. Sliding the magazine into the Glock, she chambered a round and tried the door.

Unlocked.

Suddenly, the door flew open. With her hand still on the knob, she overbalanced and staggered through the opening, slamming face-first into something hard and alive.

Whoever hit her kept moving, shoving backward. Wheeling her arms to regain her balance bought her only enough time to hit the log rail with her shoulders instead of the back of her head, not that it saved her much in the way of pain. The crack of bone against wood sent painful tingles shooting down both arms, and the Glock bounced away from her suddenly nerveless fingers, skittering across the porch. The back of her head scraped against the second rail as she hit her tailbone with a jarring thud.

She scrambled for the dropped weapon, but by the time she closed her hands around the grip, the two dark figures running away across the front yard entered the woods and disappeared almost immediately into the gloom.

Grimacing with pain, she sat up and assessed her condition. She’d have a big bruise across her shoulders in the morning and a lump on the back of her head. Plus, she’d broken a heel on a brand-new pair of shoes. But it could have been much worse.

She could have been dead.

She entered the cabin with care, finding the light switch next to the door and flicking it on. To her surprise, the living room seemed virtually untouched by the intruders she’d just startled.

The same could not be said for the next room she checked. It was a corner room with big windows looking out on the dark woods. In the daytime, she supposed, the windows would probably let in a lot of light, which was probably why Doyle had chosen this particular space as his home office.

Here the intruders had concentrated their efforts. All of the drawers had been pulled out of the walnut desk against the wall, their contents lying scattered across the hardwood floor. File cabinets stood open, spilling papers and files haphazardly from their metal depths. A framed photograph lay torn in its broken frame, a jigsaw puzzle of glass covering the floor in front of it. On the wall above, there was a combination safe. It remained safely shut, though clearly someone had tried to crack the code.

Dana backed out of the study and checked the rest of the house. The kitchen drawers had all been opened and searched, some of their contents now lying in a jumble on the counter and floor. Likewise, Doyle’s bedroom had been tossed, an explosion of clothes covering every available surface, thrown aside to assist a thorough search of the chest of drawers by the bed. A second bedroom had received similar treatment, although the mess there was limited because all the drawers and the closet were empty.

Back in Doyle’s bedroom, Dana moved aside a faded Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt and sank on the end of the bed, pulling out her phone to dial 911. But before she pressed the first number, she changed her mind and called another number instead.

Natalie Cooper answered on the second ring. “Dana. Hi.”

“Hi. Are you still at the hospital?”

“Yeah. The doctor just stopped in to reassure us that Doyle was doing fine. They’re letting him wake up a little more from the reduction and then they’ll put him in a regular room.”

“Good,” she said, genuinely relieved. Her little brother was strong and tough, but things could still go wrong during any medical procedure. “By any chance is Walker Nix still there?”

“Tall, dark and silent?” Natalie asked, lowering her voice a little.

“That’s the one.”

“He’s across the room staring stoically out the window,” Natalie answered in a wry tone. “Why?”

“I need him to call me as soon as possible. Give him my cell number.”

“Is something wrong?”

Dana didn’t know how to answer that question without potentially sucking Doyle’s old friend and former partner into a procedural mess, so she hedged. “Nothing big. I just need to ask Detective Nix something about an ongoing investigation Doyle’s been involved with. Can you give him my message?”

“Sure.” Natalie hung up and Dana ended the call from her own end, trying not to be immediately impatient for the callback.

It came before she started chewing her nails. “Natalie Cooper said you wanted me to call you?” Nix’s gravelly voice rumbled like distant thunder across the telephone line.

“I know you’re there to guard Doyle and Laney,” Dana said, already beginning to second-guess her decision to bypass emergency response. “Never mind. I’ll figure out something else.”

“Wait,” Nix said before she could end the call. “Something’s wrong.”

“Yeah,” she admitted, looking at the chaos surrounding her in Doyle’s bedroom. “Something’s very wrong.”

* * *

D
ESPITE
THE
CHAOTIC
condition of the chief’s study, it was the bloody mass of hair at the back of Dana Massey’s head that drew Nix’s immediate attention. “Your head is bleeding.”

Dana turned away from the mess and lifted her hand to the back of her head, looking surprised to find blood on her fingers. “I didn’t realize.”

She looked a little stunned all the way around, Nix thought. She might be a tough lady, but nobody could walk in on a burglary in progress and not be affected. That she’d had the presence of mind to snap a bunch of photos with her cell phone was notable enough. That she’d done it with a goose egg on the back of her head was damned near amazing.

“Am I dripping blood all over the crime scene?” she asked.

“No, seems to be oozing, mostly. It’s in your hair and on your shirt.”

“Damn it! This blouse is silk.”

“I’ve called a TBI unit in to process the place.” The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation offered crime scene investigation for small departments that didn’t have the manpower or need for a full-time evidence-retrieval staff.

She frowned. “At this time of night?”

“It’s not their usual procedure on a nonviolent case, but with your brother’s crash and the possible connection to Merritt Cortland—”

“Yeah,” she said with a nod. “I guess that might light a fire under them.”