Paula Graves - The Legend of Smuggler's Cave

“Why are you here?”

Yeah, he’d figured that question would occur to her sooner or later. “I don’t suppose you’d buy it if I said I was just driving by?”

Her dark eyebrows twitched in reply.

“I was staking out the place. In case the intruders returned.”

The tiniest hint of a smile curved one corner of her mouth. “And what did you plan to do if they did?”

“Call the cops.”

She nodded toward the Remington 700 propped by the door. “Where’d you get the rifle?”

“It’s mine.”

“You hunt a lot, do you?”

He took a stab at changing the subject. “Somebody around here does. Freezer’s full of game.”

“I bag as much as I can during the hunting seasons. We’ll live off that meat for the rest of the year.” She waved her hand toward the rifle. “May I?”

He nodded, and she picked up the weapon, first checking for ammunition. “I heard two rounds. Where did you aim?”

“At the ground.”

She looked up at him. “You have the rest of your ammo on you?”

He didn’t know if there was any other ammunition for the rifle at all, he realized. He’d been lucky it had been loaded—he wasn’t sure what he’d have done if he’d pulled the trigger and nothing had happened.

“Have you ever shot this rifle before?” She sounded as if she knew the answer.

“No.”

“Why do you have it, then?”

“Emergencies,” he answered, the truth too humiliating to admit.

From the look on her face, she saw through his answer anyway. She set the empty rifle against the wall. “If you’d like shooting lessons, I can help you out with that.”

“For a fee?”

Her gaze snapped up to meet his. “You saved us tonight. I reckon I could let you have a lesson for free.” Her voice tightened. “One, at least.”

Great. He’d insulted her. “I didn’t mean—”

“What do you think you’re going to find here?” She leaned her back against the front wall and crossed her arms, looking at him through narrowed eyes. “Or maybe you’re here because those men were working for you?”

He stared at her a moment, wondering if she was joking. The look on her face suggested otherwise. “You think I would put you and your son at risk? For what possible reason?”

“To play hero? To worm your way into my life so you could use me for whatever it is you’re up to.”

“What do you think I’m up to?”

She shrugged. “Hell if I know. Maybe you just want to punish your brother for existing.”

He wouldn’t mind knocking the smug smile off Doyle’s face now and then, but he wouldn’t use someone else to do it. He’d knock it off himself.

“I told you the truth last night at the hospital. I think your husband’s involvement with Wayne Cortland may have gone beyond sleeping with the man’s bookkeeper. I even think his murder wasn’t as random as the police believe.”

She was silent for a long moment, as if letting that thought sink in. Finally, she pushed herself away from the wall, rubbing her eyes with both hands. “What do you want from me? What do you think I can give you?”

It was a good question, and until just a few minutes ago, he’d have said all he wanted was a few minutes of her time, a chance to pick her brain for anything in her husband’s last few months of life that might offer a new lead in the Cortland case. But two attacks on the woman in a row went far beyond coincidence. Apparently he wasn’t the only person who thought Briar Blackwood could aid in the investigation, and unlike Dalton, the others didn’t care who got hurt in the process.

“I think the more pressing question is, why did someone break into your house last night? And why did someone attack you again tonight?”

The sound of a truck engine began to filter through from outside the cabin, and a moment later, headlights flashed through the window, bouncing off the walls. Briar turned to the window. “It’s Nix and Dana.”

Dalton’s heart sank. Dana. Of course she’d be with Nix. They were practically inseparable these days. Walker Nix was one of the reasons she’d decided to stick around Bitterwood instead of heading back to Atlanta.

“If you want to go without seeing your sister,” Briar said quietly, “you can always go out the back.”

Was his dismay so obvious? “I’m not sneaking out like a criminal.”

She shrugged and opened the door at the first sound of footsteps on the front porch. Dana Massey entered first, her eyes widening a notch at the sight of Dalton. Walker Nix followed on her heels, the look he shot at Dalton tinged less with surprise and more with suspicion.

“What are you doing here?” Nix asked.

“He came to my rescue,” Briar answered, locking the door behind them. “Don’t ask why. He doesn’t seem inclined to share his secrets.”

She made him sound like a foot-stomping adolescent, Dalton thought. Hell, maybe that’s what he’d been acting like for the past few months. He’d be the first to admit he hadn’t taken well the earthshaking change in his life history.

“I saw what transpired,” Dalton said. “I’ll tell you what I remember, though I’m afraid it was too dark for me to have seen anything I could testify to in a court of law.”

Nix looked him up and down once, then nodded toward the sofa. “Well, we’ll start with what you can tell us and worry about prosecution later. How about that?”

As Dalton followed the detective to the sofa, he spared one last look at Briar Blackwood standing by the door, her arms crossed defensively over her breasts, her thundercloud gaze following him relentlessly across the room.

* * *

“WHAT DO YOU think he wants with you?” Dana’s voice was little more than a whisper as she walked with Briar into the kitchen.

“He thinks Johnny was part of Cortland’s crew,” Briar answered just as quietly, moving past the now-sticky kitchen table to grab a clean dishcloth. She drenched the cloth with water from the tap and headed for the table to clean up the mess, starting with Logan’s hands and face.

He was grinning now, a strawberry-stained show of little-boy joy that made her heart swell with love. If he was traumatized by what had nearly happened outside only a short while ago, the ice cream had sent it into remission for the time being.

But she couldn’t forget as easily. The men who’d accosted her outside her Jeep had tried to pull Logan away from her. In fact, the more she went over events in her mind, the more convinced she was that this attack, at least, had been all about taking Logan.

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.