Paula Graves - Smoky Ridge Curse

“Oh. Hi.” Delilah’s voice, muffled by the closed bedroom door, sounded cautious. “What are you doing—?”

“Where is he, Delilah?” It was a male voice, hard and imperious.

Brand flattened his hand against the door, his heart suddenly in his throat. He looked around the room, at the lone, narrow window behind the bed, and felt like a trapped animal.

They knew he was here.

He’d done the one thing he’d most wanted to avoid, even though his instincts had driven him right to this little mountain town from the moment he’d first realized his life was in danger.

He’d brought that danger straight to Delilah Hammond’s doorstep.

“Hello to you, too, Antoine.” Delilah forced herself to smile at her soon-to-be colleague, Detective Antoine Parsons of the Bitterwood Police Department. He was a tall, lean man in his early thirties, with smooth brown skin and coffee-dark eyes that had always been able to see through a load of bull at twenty paces, even back during their school days.

But how on earth could he know that Adam Brand was here?

Antoine met her smile with an arched eyebrow. “Where is Seth, Dee? I went by the Davenport place and it was locked up tight. Tried Cleve’s old place and it’s locked up, too.”

She hid her relief. “I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him in a couple of days. I could call my mother and see if she’s heard from him.”

“We’re trying to keep an eye on Rachel Davenport, damn it! Your brother is always pulling some stupid stunt that makes our jobs harder.” Antoine sighed and looked at her disheveled state. “Did I wake you?”

“No, I’ve been up awhile.” She pulled her robe more tightly around her, even though the thermal tee and sweats underneath weren’t exactly revealing. “But I’m not interested in heating the outdoors this morning, so if you don’t mind—”

She’d meant for him to leave, but he took her words as an invitation to enter, crowding past her into the living room. If he’d been anyone else, she might have stood her ground and made him go, but Antoine was soon to be her colleague. She couldn’t afford to alienate a potential ally before she’d even started her job.

“You don’t think they’ve bugged out for good, do you?” Settling on the sofa, Antoine looked up at her, frustration shining in his eyes. “I’m getting all sorts of pressure from above as it is about not closing this case, and if he’s just hightailed it off—”

“You’re getting pressure to close the case?”

He grimaced. “It’s subtle, but yeah. Upper management would like to see it go away, now that the killer and the man who hired him are both dead.”

“Somebody was twisting Bailey’s arm to put out that hit,” Delilah said flatly. “You know that as well as I do.”

“Try proving it.”

“A new lead would be nice.” She sat in the armchair across from the sofa, trying not to think about the pillow she’d thrown hastily behind the sofa out of sight from the doorway. If Antoine decided he wanted a cup of coffee or something—

“The TBI says they’re trying to track down the source of Bailey’s gambling debts, but—”

But the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation had much bigger fish to fry than investigating a theory that someone had been pulling Paul Bailey’s strings when he tried to drive his stepsister out of her role as CEO of Davenport Trucking. Rather than trying to figure out why control of the company might be worth killing people to get, the authorities seemed willing to write it off as one man’s insane ambition.

Tension stretched through her body like a giant rubber band. She needed Antoine to go away. Now. “Well, I can tell you this. Wherever Seth is, he’s with Rachel, and he’ll take a bullet for her before he lets anything happen to her.” She let her gaze drop, not wanting Antoine’s sharp eyes to catch the fact that she was on edge.

That was when she spotted the torn gauze package.

Her nerve endings clanged as if someone had snapped that rubber band of tension. Balling her fists by her sides, she tried not to react, even though her pulse had jumped about twenty beats a minute.

The package must have fallen beneath the coffee table the night before when she was cleaning Brand’s wound. It lay a few inches from Antoine’s foot, just under the edge of the table, and it had a rusty splotch of dried blood on it. If he looked down at his feet—

She rose immediately. “Antoine, I don’t mean to be rude, but I have some errands to run before lunchtime, and if I don’t get to it—”

“Of course. Sorry.” Antoine stood and shot her an apologetic smile. “If you hear from Seth or Rachel, will you let them know I’m trying to keep them, you know, alive?”

“Of course.” She walked him to the door, keeping her body carefully between him and the coffee table.

He paused in the doorway, jangling her nerves again with his slow retreat. “I’m not quite sure why you decided to throw in your lot with us hicks here in Bitterwood, but I’m glad to have you on board. I’ve heard great things about you over the years. Your mother is very proud.”

And very talkative when drunk, Delilah thought, immediately feeling disloyal. Her mother might not have a great track record at going off the booze, but last night she’d shown signs of really trying to get her life in order. Maybe she needed support, not more skepticism.

She’d give her a call just as soon as she got Antoine out of the way and Brand out of her bedroom.

“Thanks,” she said to Antoine. “I’m actually looking forward to it.” At least, she was looking forward to investigating a hunch she’d begun forming a few weeks earlier when she’d first come back to Bitterwood.

“Next Monday, right?”

She nodded. “That’s right. Save a desk for me.” She stood in the doorway until he drove away, then closed the door and sagged against it, her head pounding with delayed reaction.

“You can come out now,” she called.

She heard the bedroom door creak open, and Brand came back into the living room, his brow creased. “Who was that?”

“Antoine Parsons, one of the Bitterwood cops. He’s looking for Seth.”

“Seth is missing?”

“ Missing may be a strong word. My guess is, he got Rachel out of town for a while.” She narrowed her eyes at Brand. “He didn’t know you were in town, did he?”

Brand shook his head. “Nobody knows but you.”

“We need to figure out what to do next.”

“I’ve been thinking about that.” He picked up the pillow she’d stashed behind the sofa and handed it to her, his expression somber. “I need to get out of here. All I’m doing is putting you in danger. Maybe it was just Antoine this time, but how long do you think it’ll take for someone to figure out my connection to you?”

“I haven’t worked for you in years.”

“But your brother has. The FBI knows about it—they sanctioned his paychecks and took advantage of his information. And they know you and I were once on the same team.”

She wondered, sometimes, if the FBI had ever suspected just how close she and Brand had come that one fateful night on an undercover assignment. She and Brand had barely spoken of it afterward, and within weeks she’d resigned from the FBI and left Washington behind.

Would his superiors think him likely to come here for help?

“I don’t think anyone will connect us any time soon.” She tossed the pillow back on the sofa. “But it’s probably a good idea if you take the bedroom from now on. Easier to hide evidence of your being here if you’re not stuck in the front room.”

“You’re not listening to me.” He put his hands on her arms, wincing a little as the movement apparently tugged his wound. “I have to go. I’m not going to put you in any more danger.”