Setting her stone butterfly on a wall shelf in the front room, Sam pushed back the curtain. She checked the suitcases she seemed to be living out of, went into the bathroom and looked through her personal belongings, and came out to examine the open studio. “That first time, I could tell someone had been in here. This time,nothing.”
Her space was limited, neat,and easy to tell if anything was out of place. Walker nodded agreement. “Since Xavier probably has keys to every rental in town, he may have been the one who searched your place earlier. If he meant to do it again, he could have. So he must have come for another reason, then passed out waiting foryou.”
“A purpose besides burning me out? What would have happened if I’d been here?” she whisperedin a mix of panic andhorror.
“If you’d been here, you might have seen whoever gave him the drugs. Or you might have been accused of giving them to him. It’s a damned good thing you went with me to the lodge.” He shouldn’t have saidthat.
Her eyes grew wide and looked almost purple in this light. “You think they may have been framingme?”
“You seem to hold the key to the Lucys,but let’s not speculate. Come on, let’s go to bed. We can just sleep, if that’s what you want. It will be a shortnight.”
Fortunately for him, Sam wasn’t ready for sleep. They worked off their adrenaline overloads together, without any need to discuss where their non-relationship was going. Walker thought he might be able to handle this friends with benefits business they hadgoing.
In the morning, they explored the tiny shower together. For the first time, Sam studied his damaged thigh, running her fingers over the puckered skin and injured muscle. Walker stood still for it. He supposed he had to explainsometime.
“I only read the small piece in the newspaper,” she saidhesitantly.
“My late wife heard voices.” He knew she needed to understand the true extentof his damage. “She was a writer, said medication messed with herwork.”
“You don’t have to tell me if it still hurts,” she whispered, caressing hischest.
What she was doing distanced the pain. He knew talking would help, but he had to grit his teeth to continue. “The voices told her our son was a distraction she didn’t need. She took my gun out of its case and openedfire.”
Here was the hard part, and he hugged Sam close while he talked over her head. “I should have jumped on her and taken the weapon. But I followed protocol and took the safe route. I grabbed Davey and rolled beneath the car. Tess kept firing until she only had one shot left, then turned the gun onherself.”
Emergency services had arrived too late to save Davey from that first direct shotor his wife from the last one. Intellectually, he knew he couldn’t have done better, but the if-only leech sucking his soul wouldn’t letgo.
He felt her hot tears against his skin even through the stream from the shower. She didn’t question his actions as he’d been doing for months. Instead, she kissed his chest and said, “You must have been in rehab formonths.”
Tension leechedout of him. He despised sympathy, but she was simply acknowledging a truth. He lifted her chin and kissed her thoroughly, before turning off the water and reaching for atowel.
“Months in which I decided life was short, and I wanted more than a desk job,” he said, watching as she rubbed her hair dry, leaving the rest of her gorgeous body visible for hisperusal.
“And being a small-towndeputy fit the bill?” she asked, rightfullydubious.
“Looking for the reason for my father’s disappearance fit the bill.” And it still did. He wasn’t ready to give up on finding the killers, now that he knew for certain that his father had been murdered here—and that the murderer might still be on theloose.
She wrapped the towel around her and ran product through the tangle of herhair. “That’s how I feel. I want to know what happened to make my parents abandon me. Cass knows a lot more than she’stelling.”
“I think it’s all starting to unravel, but I can’t feature any of the people here as killers.” Walker missed the fresh uniform he had waiting at the lodge, but he hadn’t been thinking of clothes when he’d led Sam out last night. He strode into her bedroom to gatherhis discardeduniform.
“You don’t limp as much in the mornings,” she called afterhim.
“Muscle tires out. I’m supposed to be doing exercises to build it up again. I figured hill climbing works.” He yanked on briefs and trousers and reached for hisshirt.
She appeared in the doorway, combing out her shoulder-length hair. “Do you believe in evilyet?”
“Haven’t definedit yet,” he countered. “Dinah’s forbreakfast?”
“What if evil is all the venal things inside us—the jealousies and greed and hatred? And yes, Dinah’s. I work and she feeds me forfree.”
She bent over to rummage in her suitcase, giving Walker a heart-stopping view of her rounded buttocks. He was a goal-oriented man who didn’t waste a lot of time thinking about sex, but Sam could easilychangethat.
As long as he kept it to just sex. No more commitment and family and the painful strings that tied him in knots. He’d not been able to protect the child he’d been given. If he meant to get back into action, he wouldn’t be leading the kind of safe life a familyneeded.
“So where does strung-out on drugs and stupidity fall on the scale of evil?” he countered, to keep fromthinking of what couldn’t bechanged.
“Admittedly, nebulous.” She wiggled into a tight camisole. “So we’re back to negativity instead of Biblical evil. If we’re infused with negativity, we get depressed, take drugs, blame others for ourwoes...”
