Smoky Ridge Curse

“We weren’t involved anymore. Not romantically.” He shook his head, closing his fingers around the coffee mug to warm them. “The relationship never got very far—we were better suited as friends than lovers. But that didn’t keep me from being the prime suspect when she was murdered. See, I was the one who found her.”

“Oh, no.”

“I was in Abingdon to meet with her about some new information she’d gotten from an informant. When I got to her house, I found the door unlocked. She wasn’t answering the door, so I let myself in.”

“And you found her?”

He nodded, trying to put the scene out of his head. So much blood—

“You didn’t have an alibi?”

“She was still alive. The shooting must have just happened. I tried to stop the bleeding—” He swallowed hard, remembering the desperate fight to keep Liz alive. “There was just too much damage. But see, it had just happened. The timeline was too close. How could I prove I wasn’t the one who’d done it?”

“Surely they checked you for gunshot residue. Checked your gun.”

“She was shot with her own gun. And the killer wore gloves—they were lying next to the gun. No way to prove they didn’t belong to me, although they can’t prove they did, either.”

“This is crazy.”

“Tell me about it.”

“All I heard was that you were suspected of espionage. Nobody talked about murder.”

“The police haven’t charged me with murder yet. Their focus was on what they’d found on Liz’s computer.”

Tension drew lines in Delilah’s brow. “Which was what?”

“Emails from me, detailing our plan to frame Wayne Cortland for theft of nuclear material from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.”

Delilah sat back in her chair with a thump. “Emails from you?”

“Well, clearly, not from me. But whoever faked them knew what he was doing. I’d suspect me, too.”

“Let me guess. Some of the militias had hooked up with anarchists?” Delilah didn’t sound surprised. Maybe she’d come across something similar in some of her work with Cooper Security.

“We’d suspected all along that might be the case. When you’re determined to bring down all civil government, you don’t always care about the motives of your fellow travelers.” Brand shook his head. “I thought I’d taken all the necessary precautions to protect myself from being targeted. I wasn’t even working this case with Liz in an official capacity. But somehow Cortland figured it out.”

“Liz must have known she was a target.”

“Of course she did. She trusted the wrong person.”

“You think someone betrayed her?”

“I know someone did. There was no sign of a struggle in her apartment. The alarm wasn’t engaged. No sign of a break-in.”

“So she let her killer into her apartment willingly.”

Brand’s side was beginning to ache. He tried to ignore the pain but he couldn’t stop a grimace.

“I need to take a look at your wound.” Delilah set her coffee to the side and stood up, holding her hand out to him.

He stared at her outstretched fingers, noting the short, neat nails and wondering if she still nibbled them when she was nervous. He put his hand in hers and it felt impossibly right. As always.

She helped him to his feet and looked at the bandage. “Not a lot of seepage through the bandage. That’s good, I think.”

“You hope,” he murmured, not missing the uncertainty in her tone.

Her brown eyes met his. “You probably should have gone in search of a doctor for help. Might’ve been a little more pragmatic.”

His fingers itched to touch her face, to trace the angular lines of her jaw and brush across her parted lips, but he balled his hands into fists and controlled the urge. “I just wish I hadn’t put you right in the middle of all of this. You don’t need the headache.”

“What’s one more headache?” Her lopsided half smile nearly shattered his control, and for a second he forgot the pain in his side, the trouble hanging over his head and the eight years that had passed since he’d last kissed Delilah Hammond’s soft, pink mouth.

He wanted her. He’d wanted her from the first moment she walked into his office, all long legs and brilliant brains, and he had a feeling he was going to want her for the rest of his life.

What would she do if he told her she was the reason he’d never been able to take things to the next level with Liz? Or with any other woman he’d met since she walked into his office eleven years ago?

But he wouldn’t tell her. Because one thing hadn’t changed. He was still too wed to his job to be any good for a woman. Look how desperate he was to prove his innocence and get reinstated.

He’d already made the mistake of trying to have it all, and that had been a spectacular disaster. He wasn’t going to make that mistake twice.

“There’s some ibuprofen in the cabinet by the fridge. I’ll go get the first-aid kit.” She left the kitchen, giving him a chance to get his desire for her under control for the moment, though he was beginning to wonder how long he could ignore the truth.

All the other excuses—the proximity to Oak Ridge, the Davenport Trucking connection, his suspicion that Cortland might have allies in the small mountain town of Bitterwood—were meaningless in the face of his real reason for coming here.

He’d come to Tennessee because it was where she was. Even if there wasn’t a damned thing he could offer her but more heartache.

She returned with the first-aid kit and the bucket of soapy water. “Want to do this here or in the living room?”

“Here is fine.” He lifted his arm to give her easier access to his bandage. “Be careful. You know I’m delicate.”

She slanted a look at him, as he’d intended. “Yeah, you’re a real hothouse flower.” Still, she was gentle as she tugged the tape away from the bandage she’d applied to his side the night before.

He sneaked a quick look at the furrow the bullet had torn in the skin just above his left hip. It appeared a bloody mess, but the margins of the wounds seemed less inflamed, as if healing had already begun. “What do you think?”

“It looks better. I wish I could get you some antibiotics, though.”

“We’ll keep an eye on my temperature and keep the wound clean. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Her gaze lifted to his. “I’m not a big fan of depending on luck.”

He smiled. “Not everything can be planned to death, Hammond.”

“Anything worth doing deserves the attempt to plan it to death,” she retorted, drenching a washcloth in the suds. She cleaned the wound as carefully as possible, wincing when he couldn’t hold back a gasp of pain. “Sorry!”

“You should call your mother,” he said as she patted the bullet wound dry and pulled out a tube of antibiotic cream. “So she doesn’t come looking for you. You left there pretty quickly last night.”

“I told her I had to help a friend in need.”