Paula Graves - Smoky Ridge Curse

“You’re not listening to me, ” she snapped back. “I’m not your underling, and you don’t get to make this choice for me. You need help, and I intend to give it to you, at least until you’re strong enough and well enough to have a chance in hell of surviving out there.”

“If you’re caught helping me, you’ll be arrested.”

The thought made her stomach ache. She’d spent most of her life priding herself on being the only Hammond from Bitterwood, Tennessee, who’d never stepped foot on the wrong side of a jail cell’s bars.

“Yeah, think real hard about that, Hammond. I know what it would mean to you to be booked and incarcerated.” His voice lowered, his head moving closer. “I’m not worth it.”

Her gaze snapped up. “That’s for me to decide. You came here for a reason. If it wasn’t for me to help you, what was it?”

His eyes narrowed slightly, and he took a step back. “It wasn’t for your help. At least not intentionally.”

She felt a sinking sensation in her stomach. He’d always had a way of bursting her bubbles, hadn’t he? “Then why?”

“A week before Liz died, she called me and mentioned that one of the private investigators she’d hired to follow Wayne Cortland had trailed him as far as Maryville. He said Cortland met a man in a coffee shop about three blocks from Davenport Trucking. He sent her a picture he’d snapped on his camera phone, but it wasn’t the best resolution. He’d had to take it at a distance. But the photo seemed to show Cortland having coffee with Paul Bailey.”

Delilah raised her eyebrows. “Why haven’t we heard about this?”

“It was the last thing Liz heard from her P.I. The guy just disappeared off the map. Last I heard, nobody has a clue where he might be now.”

“You think Cortland killed him?”

“Or had it done. Either way, I don’t think the man’s still alive. There’s a whole lot of ways to disappear in these hills.”

“Is anyone looking into his disappearance?”

“The Abingdon cops opened a case, but there aren’t any leads to follow. Maryville can’t even find record the guy was in town, except for that photo he sent. There’s nowhere to look.”

“You think this is evidence Cortland was manipulating Bailey into driving Rachel out of Davenport Trucking’s CEO position?”

“If Cortland’s pulling the strings on an Appalachian drug organization, I’m sure he’d find it helpful to have a whole fleet of trucks at his disposal. What if the debt Bailey owed was to Cortland? It would give Cortland a lot of leverage.”

Delilah’s head was beginning to ache again. She put her hand on Brand’s arm, closing her fingers around the hard muscles when he flinched as if he was ready to pull away. “I know I can’t stop you if you want to leave. But I also can’t ignore the things you’ve told me. I’m starting work with the police department next week, and I’m going to want to follow these leads. If you’re right, a man’s been murdered right here in my neck of the woods. And there’s another man plotting God only knows what that could affect the people I’ll be paid to protect and serve. So if you think you’ll be sparing me any grief, you won’t. You’ll just be leaving me without backup and important information I’ll probably need to know.”

He clapped his hand over hers where it lay on his forearm. “I don’t want any of this to touch you.”

She pressed her lips into a thin line, both moved and frustrated by his inclination to shield her. “I’m not fragile and I’m not helpless. I need your trust and respect, not your protection.”

“You know you have that.” He sounded offended.

She shook her head. “If you trusted and respected me, you wouldn’t be trying to control what I do. You did this same thing before, Brand. You made decisions for me, to hell with what I thought or wanted. You always think you know what’s best for other people.”

He looked down at her hand. “Right now, I don’t know what’s best for anyone. Including myself. It’s all gone so wrong, and I don’t have a clue how to fix it.”

She loosened her grip on his arm, her frustration fading. For all his exasperating, control-freakish ways, he still had a good heart. She’d questioned his actions many times over the years they’d worked together, but never his motives.

“That’s what I’m for.” She let go of his arm and nodded her aching head toward the kitchen. “Let’s find something to eat. Problems always look a little less awful on a full stomach.”

He looked at her for a long moment, as if teetering on the edge of an important decision. Finally, he gave a nod and followed her into the kitchen.

She released a silent breath, relieved. She had a feeling if he was right about his theories—and so far they were meshing all too well with what she knew about the Davenport Trucking conspiracy case—he might be the key to breaking this whole thing open and flushing out the bad guys she knew were still hiding in the shadows, waiting for the investigation to die down.

She didn’t intend to let anyone get away with murder in her hometown.

LIGHT SNOW FLURRIES floated down from the glassy sky, swirling in the wind and melting as soon as they touched the ground. Not cold enough to stick, Brand thought as he gazed through the narrow gap in the front-room curtains.

“Still snowing?” Delilah’s warm drawl sent a flush of masculine awareness sizzling up his spine. Her voice had been his first introduction to her, with its sultry timbre wrapped around a faint mountain twang. She’d answered his call to the Baltimore field office and he’d realized in an instant that he needed her on his team.

He’d thought it would be a temporary assignment, as he and the domestic-terrorism task force were heading to the mountains of North Carolina on a manhunt. He could tell she was from the general area, and she probably knew more about getting in and out of the small mountain towns without raising alarms than anyone else on his task force did.

He’d been right, although it hadn’t taken long once he set eyes on her to realize she was nothing but trouble, and mostly to him.

“Just flurries,” he answered her question. “What’s the weatherman saying?”

“Snow in the hills again tonight.” She had showered and changed into a pair of jeans that did wonderful things for her legs and backside and a long-sleeved heather-gray T-shirt that did wonderful things to the rest of her. He couldn’t hold back a smile, drawing a quirk of her eyebrows.

“What?”

“Just remembering the first time I laid eyes on you in that cherry-red suit with the skirt about two inches shorter than every other woman’s in the bureau. You walked in there determined to make an impression, and you did. I had to slap every man on the task force upside the head to get their eyes back in their skulls.”

“ You weren’t impressed.”

“I just didn’t show it.”

“I think I’d probably do things differently now.” She crossed to stand by him at the window, gazing out at the front yard. Flurries were beginning to linger on the fallen leaves in the yard, melting more slowly. She rubbed her arms briskly. “Temperature’s dropping. We may get some of that accumulation here as well.”

“Will it snow us in?” he asked, trying not to wish for it. He had so much to do and time was running out. The last thing he could let himself do was lose focus because of Delilah.

But that was the effect she’d always had on him, wasn’t it?

“No, the road surfaces are still too warm. But it’s coming.” She looked up at him. “Are you going to keep fighting me on this? Or are you going to let me help you?”

“You start a new job soon, don’t you?”