Nothing To Lose

She didn’t add that Angela Bradshaw had suffered from a grab bag of mental health issues or that few of the snippets of memory she had of her mother were pleasant.

“What was Hunter like as a big brother?”

She gave him a cool look over the lip of her wineglass. “Is this on the record?”

“Up to you.”

She debated exactly what to tell him as the spectres of those dark family secrets loomed. For so much of her life, she had tried to pretend those first six years didn’t exist, that they were just some murky nightmare.

She didn’t like remembering how bad things had been as Angela’s condition deteriorated. She didn’t talk about it with anyone—choosing to break her silence to someone writing a book didn’t seem the greatest idea.

On the other hand, her ultimate goal was to convince Wyatt that Hunter wasn’t capable of murdering anyone. To do that, she would have to tell him at least something of their childhood.

“He was older than me by five years. I guess you know that.”

“So that makes you twenty-six.”

“Right. Five years doesn’t seem like much when you’re thirty-one and twenty-six, but take away a few decades and it’s a huge chasm at eleven and six. I think most boys that age would rather be caught in their Underoos on the school playground than be seen hanging around with their little sisters, but Hunter never seemed to mind me tagging after him. He was a great brother and never treated me with anything but love and kindness. I don’t remember him ever yelling at me or teasing me. He looked out for me. Protected me.”

He frowned at this. “Against what?”

She should tell him now. This was the perfect opportunity. The words hovered inside her, but in the end she chickened out. Once he knew the truth about Angela, he would jump to more wrong conclusions about Hunter—and about her.

“He protected me against anything that threatened me,” she said instead. “I love him and I know him, probably better than anyone else in the world. He can be a tough man when it’s necessary. A hard one. He has a strong sense of justice and maybe sees things as too black or white, but no matter what the provocation, he would never murder anyone. The man I know—the man I grew up in the same house with, simply isn’t capable of it.”

“Nice opening statement, Counselor.”

Her smile was small and rueful. “Sorry. I guess I tend to come off a little strong. I probably sound like a zealot.”

“You sound like a loving sister trying to help her brother.”

Trying, maybe, but for all her efforts, she didn’t seem to have been accomplishing much. Spinning her wheels, that’s all she seemed to be doing since his conviction.

They had finished eating, she saw, and though under other circumstances she would have enjoyed lingering around the table and learning more about him, she knew she couldn’t afford to waste his time. “I have tiramisu. If you’d like, we can have coffee with it in my office while I show you the evidence I’ve collected since the trial.”

“Sounds great.”

She loved her small office, filled with comfortable, favorite pieces of furniture she had moved here from her father’s library after his death when she and Hunter sold the house on Walker Lane. No surprise, Hunter hadn’t wanted any of it. As far back as she could remember, he and the Judge had a stormy relationship and she was fairly certain Hunter had few pleasant memories of the oak-paneled room where their father had presided with such a firm hand.

She found it peaceful, though. This was where she worked, where she preferred to study. She and Kate had crammed for many med school exams behind this desk. It had always been a refuge from the stress of life.

But when she walked inside with Wyatt behind her, the room seemed to shrink. He had such a commanding presence, a masculine confidence she found entirely too attractive.

Wyatt took the burgundy leather armchair opposite her desk, stretched out his long legs, and watched her expectantly.

Taylor didn’t quite know where to start. She had volumes of information carefully organized—court transcripts, the police report, newspaper clippings, eyewitness reports. She had more files on her computer, information she regularly dumped to her laptop.

What would he find most compelling? she wondered.

“You were in the courtroom so you know the basics of the case,” she began.

“I wasn’t there every day,” he answered, “but I have studied the court transcript extensively.”

Sitting behind the desk with him on the other side seemed entirely too formal, so she chose to perch on the edge, trying not to fidget. “Then you know the state’s case against Hunter was completely circumstantial. They had nothing to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hunter killed Dru or Mickie.”

“It was circumstantial but it was strong. His fingerprints were all over the scene.”

“He dated Dru for eighteen months. It would have been more unusual if his fingerprints weren’t there! Don’t you find it significant that they weren’t on the murder weapon?”

“You mean the murder weapon that just happened to be registered to your brother?”

“Anyone could have fired that gun! He gave it to Dru the week before the murders, for protection after she received death threats.”

Wyatt frowned. “So he says. No one could substantiate either the death threats or your brother’s claim that he gave her his weapon. If she was threatened, she didn’t tell anyone else but your brother.”

As it always did when she heard the evidence against her brother, Taylor’s blood pressure seemed to rise. She wanted to snap back an angry retort, but that wouldn’t accomplish her goal. She was supposed to be showing him new facts, convincing him of Hunter’s evidence, not rehashing all the damning evidence from the trial.

“My brother was an experienced detective,” she said after a moment of deep breathing for calm. “Don’t you think if he was going to kill someone with his own weapon he would certainly be smart enough not to leave it behind for the whole world to find?”

She didn’t give him time to respond. “And let’s focus on the weapon. It was wiped clean, right? But the state crime lab did retrieve one partial from the safety. Did you know that?”