Paula Graves - The Legend of Smuggler's Cave

A painful sensation wriggled in the pit of his stomach. He killed it with ruthless dispatch. “I understand that. But I have some questions about the incident that the detective may not have known to ask.”

Something shifted in those gunmetal eyes, a flicker of flame warming their wintry depths. “Such as?”

Ah, he thought, she’s curious. That was good. Curiosity was exactly the sort of trait he needed from this woman if he was going to get the answers he sought. “Such as, do you believe this most recent break-in could be related to the one that happened a few weeks ago?”

Her eyes went from molten steel to flinty ice in a split second. “What makes you think Nix wouldn’t have asked such an obvious question? Do you have such a low opinion of the police?”

Dalton gave himself a mental kick. Once more he was letting his anger at Massey taint everything and everyone connected to him. Of course Nix would have asked the obvious question. “Fair enough.”

Briar glanced up at Laney. Some communication moved silently between them, for Laney patted Briar’s arm and walked away, leaving him alone with her.

He sat in the empty chair beside her. “You like handling things on your own. Don’t you?”

She didn’t answer.

“You’re sitting off here by yourself, away from your friends. You sent Laney away so you could handle my questions alone.”

“You seem to know something, or think you know something, about the break-in. So spill it.” She kept her voice low, her hand still drawing soothing circles around her son’s back.

“I know your husband died seven months ago.”

“He was murdered seven months ago,” she corrected quietly. Her voice had an oddly detached tone, making him wonder about the state of the relationship at the time of Johnny Blackwood’s murder.

“You weren’t a suspect?”

Her gaze flicked toward him. “I had an alibi.”

“Work?” She’d still been the emergency services night-shift dispatcher at the time of Johnny’s death.

She nodded. “Plenty of security video to establish my whereabouts.”

“But you had a motive?”

She took a quick, sharp breath through her nose. “Is there a point to this line of questioning?”

He supposed there wasn’t, other than curiosity. He knew the basics about Johnny Blackwood’s goings and comings during the months leading up to his murder. It was how he’d latched on to Johnny in the first place—reading through the case notes and seeing signs of a potential connection to another case he was looking into. But the personal details in the case file were scarce, perhaps because Briar was part of the Bitterwood P.D. family. Personal matters not pertaining to the case would have been minimized and even left out to protect her privacy.

Like the state of the marriage at the time of his death. The cops would have wanted to know if there had been trouble in her relationship with her husband. And Dalton knew that on Johnny’s side, at least, there had been trouble to spare.

But did his wife know what Dalton knew?

As he puzzled through how best to ask her such a delicate question, a doctor in a white jacket over green scrubs entered the waiting room. “Mrs. Franklin’s family?”

Briar’s whole body seemed to snap to tautness at the sound of the doctor’s voice. She stood, clutching her small son more tightly to her, and crossed to meet the doctor halfway.

Dalton trailed behind her, catching up in time to hear the doctor say, “We’ll want to keep her until tomorrow because she lost consciousness, but she’s not showing any continuing mental confusion, which is a very good sign. She did sustain a fracture of both bones in her lower right arm, however. We’ve reset the bones and applied a fiberglass cast to just above the elbow. She’ll need to wear the cast for at least four weeks.”

“Can I see her?” Briar asked.

“Check with the nurse at the front desk in the E.R.—she’ll tell you what room she’ll be in.” The doctor smiled, gave Briar a comforting pat on her shoulder and left the waiting room, moving at a clip.

“Good news,” Dalton murmured.

Briar turned her gaze toward him, her eyes narrowing. “You’re still here.”

“Yes, I am,” he said, not taking offense. He knew he was making a nuisance of himself by coming here at this hour of night to bother her, but it couldn’t be helped. She might hold the key to his uncertain future without even realizing it.

“I have to go check on my aunt.” She turned away from him and crossed to where Laney sat, murmuring something before she handed off her son to the other woman.

Dalton watched her straighten her back and leave the waiting room with her shoulders squared and her chin up, like a soldier readied for battle. It struck him, in that brief glimpse of her steel core, that Briar Blackwood was a woman who thrived on challenges that made other people collapse.

Could that trait of hers be useful to him?

As Dalton started out the door after her, Doyle Massey rose from his chair and moved into his path. He was smiling as he did so, in that charming snake-oil salesman way of his, all teeth and beach tan and ulterior motives.

“Where are you going?” Doyle asked.

“That’s none of your business.” Dalton tried to take a step around him, but Doyle shifted, staying in his path.

“I don’t know what you’re up to or why you’ve suddenly taken an interest in my newest recruit, but don’t drag our bad blood into it.”

Dalton couldn’t help smiling at the chief’s choice of words. “Bad blood, huh?”

“Dana and I get that you don’t want to be part of our family, and you know, we can live with that. But don’t think that means we’ll let you screw with our lives and the lives of people around us.”

“Your faith in my integrity is touching.”

“I have no faith in you at all,” Doyle snapped back, dropping all pretense of friendly civility. “What brought you here tonight?”

“A case.” Dalton lifted his chin, daring the chief to start a fight.

“Which case is that?”

Dalton glanced to his right as Walker Nix rose from his seat and headed for the waiting room door. Off to see after the Blackwood widow and her aunt, he guessed. Maybe take the older woman’s statement.

He’d wanted to be there for that statement himself, but clearly the chief had other ideas.

“Why don’t you both try being straight with each other?” Laney rose from her chair and moved to turn their tense twosome into a threesome.

They both looked at her, and she lifted her eyebrows in response.

Doyle looked back at Dalton, his eyebrows mimicking his fiancée’s. “Well? What case are we talking about?”

Dalton was tempted to just leave without answering. But with so much on the line—not just his own ambitions but the safety of all the people he’d sworn justice for—he couldn’t afford to let his emotions muck up the works.

“I’ve been trying to piece together a conspiracy case against the people we suspect were involved in the Wayne Cortland crime network,” he said finally, lowering his voice by habit. “You know that Blake Culpepper has been fingered as one of the people involved.”

“And you come here in the middle of the night to a hospital waiting room to ask Blake’s distant cousin questions about his criminal activity?” Doyle sound unconvinced.

“Not about Culpepper.” Dalton tamped down a smile at the thought that he actually knew something his know-it-all half brother didn’t. “I came here to ask her questions about her late husband.”

“You have questions about Johnny? Why?”

“Because odds are good he was part of Cortland’s organization.”

Chapter Two

Briar had never liked hospitals, even before her mother’s death from breast cancer. The antiseptic smells, the dim artificial lights, the rhythms of machines that beat like the pulse of some giant predatory beast—they were alien to the life she knew, a life of fresh air, changing seasons, the loamy essence of earth and trees and the feel of wind in her hair.