The Lawman's Secret Son

“‘Anyone’ being your mother.”

“Does it matter? I’m sorry I haven’t moved fast enough for you. I’ll get to it right away.” The truth was the papers were ready. They were upstairs, in her suitcase. But she couldn’t give them to Brady without an explanation. There were things he needed to know, things they needed to work out. But not now, not in her mother’s garden, not when she needed to get back inside the house.

“The only reason it matters is Bill Armstrong,” Brady said.

“Billy’s father? Why—”

“Since the internal investigation found reasonable cause for the shooting, he’s threatening a civil suit against me. I guess I don’t blame him.”

She waited.

With a bitter twist to his lips, he added, “They never found the gun and trust me, they looked. Armstrong insists his boy didn’t have access to a handgun and wouldn’t have carried one if he did. I still swear I saw one. It’s a stalemate.”

“But the river…” she began, something more niggling at the back of her mind. But what?

“Yeah. I know. It could be buried in three feet of silt and muck, it could be halfway to the ocean by now. Who knows?”

“Mr. Armstrong won’t win.”

“He’ll have the sympathy of the jury. He lost both his kids within a month. And you know what the name Skye is worth around here.”

“You are not your father,” she said. She’d said it before, but it never seemed to sink in.

His laugh was sudden and without mirth. “You’ve always been naive. Maybe it comes from being born with a silver spoon in your mouth.”

“And you’ve been afraid you’ll turn into your father. It’s not written that you will be a drunk and a loser.”

“Ah, darling, it’s the family tradition,” he said, his voice low and silky and taunting. “My dad, my brother—”

I will not rise to the bait, she told herself and stood there with her mouth closed.

He finally added, “Anyway, it’s not me I’m worried about.”

“Maybe you should.”

Frowning, he said, “What does that mean?”

“What’s happened to you? When did you stop caring?”

“Stop caring about what? What are you talking about?”

“Your appearance, for instance. I can’t believe the department lets you wear your hair that long.”

“I’m not a policeman anymore, Lara. That part of my life is over. I thought you knew that.”

She could hardly fathom such a thing. Brady had always wanted to be a cop. “Then what do you do?”

“I work construction like I did in college.”

That explained the muscles. “But you were exonerated, weren’t you? Why didn’t you go back? Was it Chief Dixon?”

He shrugged and looked away.

“Brady,” she said, touching his wrist. Big mistake. Sensory recognition traveled through her system like a lightning bolt, erasing the last three hundred sixty-three days in the blink of an eye. She drew her hand away at once. “You wouldn’t have shot the boy if you hadn’t had to,” she said, her voice gentle. “You saved Tom’s life.”

He looked straight into her eyes and her heart quivered in her chest. She did not want to feel anything for him, let alone the tumultuous combination of lost love and resentment currently ricocheting inside her body like a wild bullet. Her mother had warned her a man with Brady’s past could never really love anyone. Lara hadn’t believed it until that night when he’d proved it to her.

He said, “I have nothing to lose. But you do.”

“Me? Oh, you mean money. You think Bill Armstrong is going to come after my family’s money.”

“If he finds you’re legally my wife, yes. If he finds a way to stick it to me or anyone I care—cared—about, yes, I do. Our marriage is a matter of public record. All he has to do is look. Maybe you ought to light a fire under your lawyer.”

She closed her eyes, trying to imagine her mother’s reaction to someone suing Brady and walking off with the Kirk fortune.

“It’s not the civil suit I’m worried about,” Brady added. “It’s Armstrong himself. He’s gone half-crazy since losing Billy. If he finds out about you—”

“Why would he even think about me?” she said, looking at Brady again, but her mind’s eye casting a different image. Both of the Armstrong kids had come into the teen center on occasion. First Sara, Billy’s delicate sixteen-year-old sister, then Billy and his pal, Jason Briggs, both a year younger. When Sara took a whole bottle of her grandmother’s sleeping pills, it had stunned the community and it had devastated Billy.

The senior Armstrong had come into the teen center looking for answers no one could give him. Grief and anger had battled in his feverish eyes and she’d felt horrible for him. And truth be known, a little afraid of him, too.

And then, three weeks later, Billy died.

Good Lord, no wonder Brady looked haunted.

But she couldn’t offer him what he needed. Maybe another woman could, someday, one who knew how to crack through his defenses or live with them. But not her. She said, “I’ve been gone a year, Brady. I’ll leave again in a few days. As far as anybody in Riverport knows, I’m just the girl you didn’t marry.”

He looked down at his feet then back at her, his gaze unfathomable. How could she have ever thought she knew him better than she knew herself? He was a stranger. She glanced at her watch. Almost three o’clock. “I have to get back inside.”

His eyebrows raised in query. Before he could ask a question she wasn’t prepared to answer, she told him something she hadn’t planned to. “I have a meeting this evening with Jason Briggs.”

As she’d known it would, this news diverted his curiosity. “What does he want?”

“I guess he wants to talk.”

“Why does the boy who convinced Billy Armstrong that stealing a car and a half case of beer was a good idea want to talk to you?”

She shrugged. “He got out of juvenile detention earlier this week and apparently went straight to the teen center. My replacement called me up in Seattle where I live now, and I called Jason. He asked if I was going to be around Riverport soon because he needed to talk.”

“And so you drove all the way back here to talk with a delinquent sixteen-year-old boy.”

“Among other things,” she hedged. “But, yes. There was something in his voice.”

“What do you mean?”

“He sounded nervous.”

“Jason Briggs hasn’t, to my knowledge, told anyone anything about that night except to try to blame everything on Billy.”