Smoky Ridge Curse

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.”

“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.