Paula Graves - Cooper Vengeance

She had to get control of her life. Now.

She trudged back to her sister’s grave, trying to feel something besides bitter anger and guilt. “I told you not to marry him,” she said softly to the stone.

“I’m grateful she didn’t listen,” Hamilton Gray murmured, his voice equally soft.

Natalie whirled around to face her brother-in-law, who had stepped from behind the sheltering tree. Had he lain in wait for her? “What are you doing here?”

Hamilton’s voice hardened in an instant. “Visiting my wife’s grave.” His eyes narrowed, giving his lean face a feral aspect. “The one I paid for, if you insist on becoming territorial.”

You haven’t paid yet, Natalie thought, seething at his tone. As if Carrie had been an object to cherish or discard at his whim.

“I know you think I had something to do with her murder, but I can assure you I did not. As can the authorities, as you well know.” Hamilton’s voice grew more conciliatory. “Natalie, I loved your sister. She loved me. I may not like to share my feelings with the world, but they exist nonetheless.”

There it was. That convincing air of sincerity he threw on and off like an overcoat. It seemed to fool everyone she knew, including her father, who prided himself on judgment and his knack for reading people. But Darden Becker had one enormous blind spot—money. And if there was any family in South Alabama richer than the Beckers, it was the Grays.

“I don’t expect you’ll ever think of me as a friend, Natalie. You’re hard to impress and even harder to know.”

Natalie tried not to bristle at his words, not because he was wrong but because he was right. She wasn’t easy to impress, and now that Carrie was dead, there probably wasn’t a soul in the world who really knew her at all.

“I’ve accepted that you’ll never consider me part of your family. But I’d like to give you brotherly advice, nonetheless. You should start listening to your therapist.”

“My therapist?” She knew what he was talking about; the Ridley County Sheriff’s Department had decreed that she see a therapist after her sister’s murder. A nice lady, Diana Sprayberry, who spoke in a soft, calm voice that reminded Natalie of her first grade teacher. Dr. Sprayberry was a big fan of the stages-of-grief theory.

Natalie was not.

She wasn’t in denial. She sure as hell wasn’t bargaining. And if she was stuck on anger, there was a damned good reason. A sick son of a bitch had murdered her sister and, so far, had gotten away with it.

But how in the world had Hamilton learned about her private sessions with her therapist?

“It’s not something that can stay secret in a town this small,” he said, answering the unspoken question. “I know about your sessions. I hope they’re helping.”

She met Hamilton Gray’s gentle gaze and hated him for the contempt in his voice, masquerading as pity. But she wasn’t going to stand here like some sort of movie heroine and swear to God and anyone in earshot that she was going to bring him down for killing her sister no matter what it took.

He was right when he said the authorities would affirm his innocence. He had an alibi, of sorts—he’d made a call from his cell phone the night of Carrie’s murder, and the cell tower signal showed he’d been three counties away. On business, or so he claimed. And since the sheriff’s department had no other evidence suggesting Hamilton had killed his wife, or even had a motive to do so, they’d moved on to other suspects. Thanks to her father’s business dealings, her family had plenty of enemies.

Natalie hadn’t moved on, however. Even if they could prove to her satisfaction that Hamilton had been in Monroe County as he’d claimed, over an hour’s drive from Terrebonne and outside the timeframe of Carrie’s murder, it didn’t mean he hadn’t hired someone to kill his wife.

“I don’t understand why you think I had a motive to kill your sister.” Hamilton’s plaintive comment tracked so closely to Natalie’s thoughts that a chill skittered up her spine. He had a way of looking at her, his dark eyes so focused and piercing, that she sometimes wondered if he could read her mind.

Carrie had found his intensity exciting. Natalie had always found it disturbing.

“You know why,” she answered in a voice strangled with barely contained fury.

“I was not having an affair.”

“You were always gone—”

“On business.”

“You didn’t pay the same amount of attention to her as before,” she added. “You were distant and brooding.”

“And Carrie was spoiled and at times needy.” His tone suggested he found those traits charming rather than annoying. “But honeymoons have to end sometime, Natalie. The family business requires much of my attention. I couldn’t ignore it forever.” His voice dropped a notch. “Maybe if you ever marry, you’ll understand the situation better.”

Her nostrils flared but she remained silent. After what he’d done to her sister, if he thought insulting her ability to maintain a relationship was going to make her lose her cool, he was right about one thing—he didn’t know her at all.

Hamilton extended his hand toward her. “Can’t we call a truce? At least for today, so we can both mourn your sister the way she deserves?”

She stared at his outstretched hand, loathing him so much she could barely contain the howl of rage burning like acid in her chest. “I’m done here,” she said. “Carrie knows how I feel.”

She walked away from him, forcing herself not to run, though every instinct she possessed was screaming at her to get away as fast as she could. She made it safely to her Lexus and slid behind the wheel, locking the doors. She leaned back against the sun-baked leather seat, shaking with a chaos of emotions.

“You’re going to explode if you don’t deal.” Diana Sprayberry’s gentle words drifted into her mental maelstrom. As if the therapist were physically there, methodically picking apart the tangle of Natalie’s emotions and moving them to their proper places, Natalie felt the tension seep away, leaving her enervated. Only the blistering heat of the car’s interior drove her to insert the key in the ignition and start it up so the air conditioner could dissipate the hellish swelter inside the Lexus.

She was off duty today, but the sheriff himself had called her at home early that morning and asked her to come in for a 2:00 p.m. meeting. Natalie knew Sheriff Tatum had asked Dr. Sprayberry to give him an evaluation of her mental state, but she’d been seeing the counselor for just under a week now. Surely that wasn’t long enough to assess her state of mind.

As it turned out, apparently Dr. Sprayberry thought it was plenty long enough. The therapist herself was waiting in Sheriff Roy Tatum’s office when Natalie arrived. Dressed in a steel blue variation of her usual prim business suit, Dr. Sprayberry was perched on one of the two armchairs in front of the sheriff’s wide mahogany desk when Natalie entered. She met Natalie’s wary gaze with a mixture of regret and steely certainty.

“Administrative leave?” Natalie asked in disbelief when the sheriff got straight to the point. “You’re taking me off the force completely? I don’t even get desk duty?”

Tatum’s expression revealed the same mixture of regret and certainty Natalie had seen in the counselor’s eyes. “Dr. Sprayberry believes your inability to move past your anger at your sister’s death poses a threat to the people of the county as well as your fellow deputies.”

“And to yourself,” Dr. Sprayberry added gently.

Natalie whipped her head around to look at the doctor. “So this is about taking away my weapon, not my badge. You think I’m either going to go on a shooting spree down at Gray Industries or I’m going to eat my gun?”