The Wife
BEVERLY BARTON

Copyright

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain as The Silent Killer by HarperCollins 2009

This eBook edition published 2018

Copyright © Beverly Barton 2009

Cover design © Diane Meacham Design 2018

Cover photograph © Shutterstock

Beverly Barton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9781847561374

Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780007334582

Version: 2018-06-04

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Beverly Barton

About the Publisher

Prologue

Catherine Cantrell loved her husband. She hadn’t always loved Mark, not in the beginning. But day by day, month by month, year by year, she had grown to care for him deeply. He had become her best friend as well as her husband. She only hoped that she was a worthy helpmate. God knew she tried her best to be everything he wanted in a wife.

The oven timer chimed, reminding her that the apple pie she had prepared from scratch was done. As she donned a pair of oven mitts, Mark breezed into the kitchen. When she smiled warmly at him, he returned her smile. She opened the oven door, reached inside and removed the hot pie, then set it on a cooling rack atop the granite counter.

“Something smells good,” he told her as he placed his empty coffee mug in the dishwasher.

“Apple pie for dinner,” she said.

When he nodded approval, something inherently feminine within her longed for him to touch her. She needed a kiss on the cheek or a pat on the butt or a little hug around her shoulders. Any basic act of affection would do. But Mark was not the affectionate type. She should have accepted that fact long ago. After all, it wasn’t as if they were newlyweds or a couple who had been and always would be madly in love. But they did have a solid marriage, one based on mutual respect and admiration. That was far more than most couples had.

“How’s next Sunday’s sermon going?” Catherine asked.

“Not well. For some reason I can’t seem to keep my mind on my work this afternoon.”

On Mondays, Mark worked at home instead of his office at the church. And she was home on Mondays, too, since she and her business partner, Lorie Hammonds, closed their antique store on Sundays and Mondays.

“You were up late last night with the Jeffries family. I heard you come in after midnight.” Catherine removed the oven mitts, stuffed them into the drawer with the pot holders and turned off the oven. “And you were so restless that I doubt you got more than a few hours’ sleep. Maybe you need an afternoon nap.”

“I couldn’t get that family off my mind,” Mark admitted. “It’s been difficult for Debbie and Vern coping with the loss of their only child. It has truly tested their faith.”

“Losing a child has to be the worst thing that could happen to a person. If anything ever happened to Seth, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“If, God forbid, that ever happened, and we lost our only child, we would do what I’m trying to get Debbie and Vern to do—put our trust in the Lord.”

Catherine sighed quietly. A good minister’s wife would never question God’s plan for each of His children. But in her heart of hearts, she knew that if she ever lost Seth, she would die. Her son was her heart and soul.

When Mark looked at her, apparently wanting a reply to assure him that they were in agreement, she avoided making direct eye contact with him. She didn’t doubt Mark’s love for Seth, but she also knew that her husband would never love their child as much as she did.

“Catherine—”

The distinct doorbell chime saved her from having to either lie to her husband or disagree with him and be lovingly chastised for her lack of faith.

“I’ll get it,” she said. “Why don’t you go in the den and take a nap?”

“Maybe later. I’ll get the door. It could be FedEx delivering my birthday present.”

Catherine smiled indulgently. “We just ordered that new set of golf clubs two days ago. They probably won’t arrive until next week.”

“A man can hope, can’t he?”

Laughing softly, she shook her head as Mark, whistling to himself, hurried out of the kitchen. Her husband had four great loves: God, his family, his parishioners and golf.

She doubted that his much-anticipated fortieth birthday present had arrived so soon. More than likely their visitor was not FedEx but instead her mother, who had phoned shortly after lunch to ask if she could drop by on her way home from her weekly trip to the grocery store.

Catherine wiped her hands on a dish towel, laid it aside and removed her apron. She was a messy cook and had learned early on the necessity of wearing protective covering when she baked.

As she opened the kitchen door and made her way toward the foyer, she thought she heard the murmur of voices. Mark was talking to someone, but she couldn’t tell if the visitor was male or female.

Just as she turned the corner in the hallway that led her by the staircase, an agonized scream echoed through the house. Shock waves shivered along her nerve endings. Dear God! Who was screaming in such pitiful torment?

She rushed into the foyer, planning to help Mark comfort the poor soul in misery. The front door stood wide open. Outside, on the front porch, Mark’s six-foot body writhed in agony as lapping flames consumed his clothes and seared his flesh. Momentarily transfixed by the inconceivable sight, Catherine screamed as she realized her husband was on fire. Forcing her shock-frozen legs to move, she ran out onto the porch, yelling at him, telling him to drop and roll, which he did. While he lay on the concrete porch floor, hollering with excruciating pain, she grabbed the doormat and beat at the dying flames eating away his clothing.

She dropped to her knees beside him, inspecting his charred body.

Oh God, God!

He was no longer screaming. He lay silent and unmoving. But he was still breathing. Just barely.

“Hang on, Mark. Hang on.”

She jumped up, ran into the house, grabbed the extension phone in the living room and dialed 911. Barely recognizing her own weak, quivering voice, Catherine managed to hold herself together long enough to give their address and tell the dispatcher that her husband was severely burned over his entire body.

She carried the phone back onto the porch and sat down beside Mark. He was still breathing. Still alive. But she didn’t dare touch him. There wasn’t a spot on him that wasn’t badly burned. His face was charred beyond recognition, his flesh melted as if it had been made of wax.

Merciful Lord, please help Mark. He’s such a good man. Ask anything of me and I’ll give it—just take care of him.

Chapter One

Jackson Perdue stopped his car in front of the old home place. The last time he’d been here, five years ago, had been for his mother’s funeral. He had stayed in Dunmore three days, and that had been three days too long. Both he and Maleah had booked rooms at the Hometown Inn. Their stepfather had invited them to stay at the house, but Jack knew that Nolan had been relieved when they both declined his reluctant offer. When he left town, he had felt certain he would never return.

Never say never.

Things change. Life doesn’t stay the same. Nolan Reaves was dead. The old bastard had keeled over in his workshop behind the house eight months ago. Heart attack.

Funny thing was, Jack had thought the son of a bitch didn’t have a heart.

Neither he nor Maleah had come back to Dunmore for the funeral. He didn’t know who had hated their stepfather more, he or his sister.

Maleah had come down from Knoxville six months ago, hired a realtor and put their mother’s home up for sale. With the economy heading into a recession and real estate moving at a snail’s pace, there hadn’t been any offers on the threestory Victorian that had been in his family for four generations.

Jack turned off the engine, snatched the keys from the ignition and opened the driver’s side door. When his feet hit the pavement, he stretched to get the kinks out of his back and neck and pocketed the keys. Rounding the hood, he stepped up on the sidewalk and stared at his childhood home. His thoughts went back to a time when this place had housed a happy family, when his world had been filled with love and laughter. Before his father had been killed. Before his mother had married Nolan Reaves.

Jack left the city sidewalk and moved onto the brick walkway that led to the front porch. He stopped halfway to the porch and looked up at the windows on the left side of the second story, where his old room was located. He doubted anything of his remained. When they’d been here briefly for Mama’s funeral, he had gone no farther than the downstairs parlor. For the first twelve years of his life, this old house had been home. And for the next six years, it had been hell.

Could he actually live here again? Even if he got rid of everything that reminded him of his stepfather, he couldn’t erase the memories.

He hated the cold, austere gray color Nolan had insisted the house be painted. Mama had wept quietly when the drab gray and white covered the beautiful green, cream and rose that the house had been for generations, colors true to the time period. If he actually moved into the house, the first thing he would do was hire painters to take the Victorian back to her colorful roots. He would have the house repainted—for his mother.

“God knows I’ll never move back to Dunmore, but if I did, I wouldn’t live in that house,” Maleah had told him. “As far as I’m concerned, the house is yours if you want it.”

But that was the million-dollar question: Did he want it?

Maybe. He didn’t have to decide right away. He could stay here a few weeks and see how it went. It was either that or rent a motel room by the week. Not a pleasant prospect. Besides, if his new job didn’t work out, it would be easier to move on if he hadn’t leased an apartment or a house.

He had been at loose ends when Mike Birkett phoned and offered him the job. Otherwise, he probably wouldn’t have considered coming back to Alabama. He had been honorably discharged from the army last year, after four months in the hospital recuperating from a bomb explosion that had nearly killed him. The surgeons had reconstructed the left side of his face, neck and shoulder and had done a damn good job. Only those who had known him before the reconstruction would suspect that he’d been put back together piece by piece.

“Hey, the job is yours if you want it,” Mike had told him. “The pay isn’t much, but it’s in line with the low cost of living in Dunmore.”

“Let me think about it.”

“Come home. Take the job. Let’s get reacquainted. If after a few months you hate it, you can always quit.”

In the end, Mike had convinced him to give it a try. He’d known his old buddy had pulled a few strings to get him okayed for the position. Even though he was in really good physical shape now, he’d never be 100 percent ever again. Jack wasn’t sure he’d make a good deputy just because he’d been a top-notch soldier, but God knew he needed something to do, something to keep him sane.

He stepped up on the porch, faced the front door and paused. After taking a deep breath, he removed the house key from his pocket. He unlocked and opened the door, then walked inside. A whiff of muskiness hit him the moment he entered the foyer. The house needed airing out after being closed up for so many months. First thing in the morning, he’d open every window in the place. Since it was spring and the temps were in the seventies, it was the perfect time.

As if his feet were planted in cement, he found it impossible to move beyond where he stood just over the threshold. Glancing in every direction—left, right, up and down—he clenched his teeth together tightly. He could feel Nolan’s presence, could even smell a hint of the pipe tobacco his stepfather had used. Maybe this was a huge mistake. Maybe he’d been wrong to think that he could live here. It wasn’t too late to turn around, walk away from the house and rent a room for tonight.

God damn it, no! He wouldn’t let Nolan run him off, not the way he had when Jack was eighteen. Nolan was dead. Jack was thirty-seven, a decorated war hero, and this house was his now, his and Maleah’s, as it had once been their mother’s. If it was the last thing he ever did, he intended to erase Nolan Reaves from their ancestral home, starting with the old carriage house where their stepfather had doled out his own unique brand of punishment.

Catherine Cantrell had asked her best friend, Lorie Hammonds, to drive her by her old home, just outside the city limits. She and Mark had lived there for nearly six years before his death eighteen months ago.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Lorie asked.

“I’m sure. I have to face the past sooner or later.”

“But does it have to be today?”

Cathy sighed. Yes, it had to be today. One of the many things her therapist at Haven Home had taught her was that putting off unpleasant things didn’t make them go away. The sooner she faced it, whatever “it” was, and dealt with it, the sooner it ceased to be a monster hidden in a dark closet ready to pounce on her when she least expected it.

Lorie got out of her Ford Edge, went around the hood and met Cathy as she stood at the border of the street, her gaze scanning the porch. This was where Mark had been doused with gasoline and set on fire. This was where she had waited with him, praying with every breath, until the ambulance arrived. This was where her safe, contented life had ended. Eighteen months, three weeks and five days ago.

Every nerve in her body shivered; every muscle tensed. With her eyes wide open, she could see Mark as he had been that horrible day, his flesh charred, melted, his life draining from his body. She could hear his agonized screams and then the deadly silence that had followed.

She closed her eyes and took a deep, fortifying breath.

Lorie put her arm around Cathy’s quivering shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “Come on. Let’s go.”

Cathy opened her eyes and shook her head. “Not yet.”

“Don’t do this to yourself. Enough’s enough.”

“I imagine the new minister’s wife redecorated,” Cathy said. “No woman wants to live in a house decorated by a former owner.”

“The new minister is a widower with a teenage daughter. No wife.”

“All the same, this isn’t my house any longer. My things aren’t here. The home I created with Mark is gone.”

“Your furniture and other things are in storage,” Lorie reminded her. “When you buy a new place, you can—”

She turned quickly and faced her oldest and dearest friend. “Thank you for letting me stay with you until I find a place.” Lorie and she were BFF—best friends forever—their friendship going back to when they wore diapers. Their parents had been good friends, and they had lived only blocks apart when they were growing up.

“Your mother wants you to stay with her, you know.”

“What my mother wants isn’t as important to me as what I want.”

Lorie let out a loud, low whistle. “I don’t know what they did to you at Haven Home, but I like it. The old Cathy would never have said something like that and meant it.”

“The old Cathy no longer exists. I think she began dying the day Mark died.” She looked directly at Lorie. “I couldn’t say this to just anyone, because they wouldn’t understand, they’d take it the wrong way…but it took something as traumatic as Mark’s gruesome murder to finally give me the courage to become my own person.”

Mark’s death and a year of therapy.

Cathy took one final look at the porch and then ran her gaze over the neatly manicured lawn. “I’m ready to go now.”

She followed Lorie back to the SUV. She had faced one of many demons that she had left behind a year ago when she had checked herself in at Haven Home, a mental-rehabilitation center outside of Birmingham. After the first six months, she had become an outpatient but had stayed on as a part-time employee in the cafeteria. Her mother and Mark’s parents had visited her several times and had brought Seth with them. She had missed her son unbearably, but she had known living with his grandparents had been the best thing for him until she was able to provide him with a mentally stable mother.

Mark’s death had almost destroyed her, and only with Dr. Milton’s help had she been able to fully recover. She had gone into the intensive therapy blaming herself for Mark’s death and believing that his parents and Seth blamed her for not being able to save him. But Dr. Milton had worked with her until she had been able to admit to herself that the guilt she felt wasn’t because she blamed herself for not being able to save Mark. Realistically, logically, she knew that would have been impossible. She had done everything within her power. No, what Cathy felt guilty about, what she had had great difficulty admitting to Dr. Milton and to herself, was that she had never loved her husband. She had married him not loving him, and although she had tried to convince herself that she loved him, she hadn’t. She had cared deeply for him, had respected and admired him, but she had never been able to feel for Mark that deep, passionate love a woman should feel for her husband.

“Do you want to stop by J.B. and Mona’s to see Seth?” Lorie asked.

“No, not yet. I’m supposed to have dinner with them and Mother tomorrow, after church. I’ll wait until then.”

“J.B. and Mona may not give Seth up without a fight.” Lorie inserted the key into the ignition. “I took the liberty of hiring Elliott Floyd to represent you, just in case Mark’s parents aren’t willing to turn your son over to you now that you’re well.”

Gasping softly, Cathy snapped her head around and stared at her friend. “I don’t think a lawyer will be necessary. But thank you all the same. Seth is my child. I appreciate all that J.B. and Mona have done for him since Mark’s death, but you can’t possibly believe that they would try to take him away from me.”

Lorie shrugged. “You never know what people will do. If for any reason the Cantrells think you’re unfit to—”

“I’m fit,” Cathy said. “I believe that I’m better prepared to be a good mother to my son now than ever before, and I was a damn good mother in the past.”

Lorie eyed Cathy with speculative curiosity. “You are aware of the fact that you just said damn and didn’t blink an eye, aren’t you?”

Cathy smiled. “Surprised?”

“Shocked.” Lorie laughed. “Know any other forbidden words?”

“A whole slew of them. And sooner or later, you’ll probably hear me say all of them.”

“I want to meet your Dr. Milton one of these days,” Lorie said. “I want to shake his hand and thank him for releasing the real Catherine Nelson Cantrell from that holier-than-thou prison she stuck herself in trying to please her husband and her mother and her in-laws.”

“The days of my trying to please everyone else are over. I’ve come home to start a new life, not to rebuild my old one. I owe it to myself and to Seth to be strong and independent and live the rest of my life to the fullest, and that’s just what I intend to do.”

Nicole Powell dreaded going home to Griffin’s Rest. She and her friend, Maleah Perdue, had been gone a week, just the two of them alone in a Gatlinburg cabin in the Smoky Mountains. They had eaten out a few times and done a little shopping, but mostly they had kicked back at the cabin and done little or nothing. They had watched chick-flick DVDs, soaked in the hot tub, taken long walks on the nearby hiking trails and pigged out on the array of bad-for-you food they had purchased at a local grocery store.

The past year had been difficult for Maleah. Her older brother, Jack, had been critically wounded on his last assignment in the Middle East. She had spent weeks at his bedside, hoping and praying that he would survive. He had, but at a great cost. He had undergone several surgeries to his face and neck to rebuild what the explosion had ripped away.

During their stay at the cabin, Nic and Maleah had confided in each other, sharing things that they wouldn’t or couldn’t share with anyone else. In the two years that Nic had been married to Griffin Powell and had been co-owner of the Powell Private Security and Investigation Agency, she had become acquainted with all of their agents. Only a handful of their employees were women, and of those few, Nic had bonded with only two, Maleah and Barbara Jean Hughes.

“Have you decided what you’re going to do? Are you going to talk to Griff and tell him how you feel?” Maleah asked as Nic pulled her Escalade up in front of the huge iron gates at Griffin’s Rest. Two massive stone arches, with bronze griffins implanted in the stone, flanked the entrance.

Nic rolled down the window and said her name. The identification security system instantly recognized her voice and activated the Open function on the gates. This voice-ID system was new here at the Powell compound.

Once they were inside the estate and the gates closed behind them, Nic glanced at Maleah. “I can talk to him and try to explain, but he won’t understand.”

“He might. You won’t know until you—”

“I know. Believe me. He will not understand. I can’t ask him to choose between Yvette and me.” She could, but she was afraid to ask her husband to make that choice, because deep down inside she wasn’t completely certain that he would choose her.

“It’s not a matter of choosing between the two of you,” Maleah said. “Not really. It’s a matter of making him understand how you feel.”

“I feel jealous, and Griff doesn’t understand why because Yvette is his friend, because she’s like a sister to him, because he owes her his life. He’s not in love with her. He’s in love with me, but…”

“But recently you feel that he is putting her first. You’re his wife. You have every right to expect him to always put you first.”

Nic heaved a heavy sigh. “Griff has become so involved in whatever it is that Yvette is doing with that project of hers, that school or laboratory or sanctuary or whatever the hell it is, that he has all but turned over the running of the Powell Agency to me.”

“I still don’t see why you won’t take my suggestion and get involved in Yvette’s project yourself, if for no other reason than to find out what’s going on. And it would give you more time with Griff.”

“I suppose if I insisted, he’d ask Yvette to include me, but she’s been so secretive about the whole thing, and whenever she comes for dinner and I mention the project, she clams up.”

“Look, none of this is my business, except that you and I are friends and you’ve shared your concerns with me,” Maleah said. “But you’re Griff ’s wife and co-owner of the Powell Agency and of Griffin’s Rest. You have every right to know what kind of operation Yvette Meng has going on in those buildings that Griff had built for her less than a mile from your home.”

“I just don’t want to come off sounding like a jealous wife, even if that’s what I am. But if I don’t get some of this off my chest pretty soon, I’m going to explode, and that won’t be good for me or my marriage.”

“So talk to Griff. Talk to him tonight.”

Nic nodded. Maleah was right, of course. These feelings had been growing gradually, beginning with the day Griff told her that he would be constructing a housing complex for Dr. Yvette Meng at Griffin’s Rest, a place where some of her gifted “psychic” students would be safe and protected from the outside world.

But when Yvette had arrived six months ago to oversee the project, Nic’s concerns had escalated, and not without foundation. Even though she didn’t doubt Griff ’s love for her, she couldn’t shake the suspicion that neither he nor Yvette had been totally honest with her about their past relationship.

She trusted Griff as she had never trusted another person in her entire life. She loved him so much that sometimes it frightened her. That combination of love and trust was now being tested.

He did not deserve to live. He was like the others, pretending to be good when, in his heart, he was evil.

I have to punish him.

That’s what You want me to do, isn’t it, God?

Yes, yes, I hear You. I accept that it is my purpose in life to rain hellfire and brimstone down on the false prophets.

I will do Your bidding, Lord. I will seek out those who profess to do Your work and instead are in league with the devil. The liars. The blasphemers. The adulterers. The most vile of all sinners, those who transgress against Your holy word.

I didn’t understand completely, not at first, but I do now. I cannot wait for them to reveal themselves to me. I must search for them and do so with all diligence.

Give me the strength to do what I must do. Show me the way. I am, now and always, Your obedient servant.

What?

Yes, Lord, I see him. And I know him for what he truly is. The priest has harmed dozens of little boys, and he’s gotten away with his crimes over and over again. He must be stopped. He must be punished.

Chapter Two

Jack had gotten, at most, a total of two hours’ sleep. He was still occasionally having nightmares about his last Rangers’ assignment, and since his return to Dunmore, old boyhood nightmares had resurfaced and gotten all mixed up with the ones about the war. These days if he got four hours of sleep and didn’t wake in a cold sweat, he called it a good night.

He had slept in his old room, on the same antique double bed and lumpy mattress that were almost as old as he was. If he stayed, he’d have to buy a new mattress. He hadn’t ventured into any of the other upstairs rooms yesterday, but if he intended to air out the place, he would have to go into every room, including his mother’s bedroom, a room she had shared with Nolan.

Tossing back the musty blanket and sheet, he got out of bed, stretched, scratched his chest and tromped toward the bathroom down the hall. After taking a leak, he peered into the dusty mirror over the pedestal sink and barely recognized the man looking back at him. He was no longer the teenage boy who had run away from Dunmore to escape his tyrannical stepfather, nor was he the angry man who had returned five years ago for his mother’s funeral. Although the surgeons had done an excellent job, the left side of his face would never be the same. He would never be the same. He was still reasonably young—just turned thirty-seven. And despite his extensive injuries, the doctors had put Humpty Dumpty back together again so that he was strong and healthy. And although his career in the army was over, he now had a new job that offered him a chance to start over, to build a new life.

Out with the old and in with the new. Starting today.

Jack dressed hurriedly in faded jeans and a gray T-shirt, then headed up the stairs to the third story. He opened all the windows that hadn’t been painted shut and descended the stairs, back to the second floor, and went from room to room, tying back curtains and lifting windows to let in the fresh springtime air. When he reached his mother’s bedroom, he paused, steeled his nerves and opened the door. Except for the massive pieces of burl walnut furniture that had been in this room for generations, Jack didn’t recognize anything. The room was as cold and dreary as his stepfather had been, the walls an off-white, now faded, the wooden floor unpolished for only God knew how many years. Heavy, brown brocade drapes closed out all light from the row of windows, and a matching bedspread covered the antique bed, the bed in which his maternal grandmother had been born.

As he closed his eyes just for a second, memories of his childhood flashed through his mind. He and Maleah running into their parents’ bedroom and jumping into bed with them. His beautiful blond mother’s arms opening wide to embrace them. His big, rugged father smiling as he ruffled Jack’s hair and planted a kiss on Maleah’s forehead.

Jack marched across the room, reached up and yanked the drapes, rods and all, from the windows and left them lying in dusty heaps on the floor. Morning sunlight flooded the room. He managed to open two of the four windows. As he stood and looked at his handiwork, he knew then that this would be the first room he would clear out, clean and restore.

With the windows open and the house airing out, Jack went down the back stairs and into the kitchen, which hadn’t been remodeled in a good twenty years. He’d made a stop at a mini-mart on his way into Dunmore yesterday and picked up a few supplies, enough to tide him over for a few days. All the nonperishable items remained on the kitchen counter, where he’d left them last night.

After searching through the cabinets, he found the coffeemaker, washed it thoroughly and then put on a pot of coffee. Once the strong brew was ready, he poured himself a cupful and headed out the back door.

He had faced one demon—his mother’s bedroom. How many times had he walked by her closed door and heard her crying?

He might as well face another demon, the one that made repeat performances in his nightmares. Standing in the middle of the backyard, he stared at the old carriage house, now little more than a dilapidated, unpainted hulk. He was surprised a high wind hadn’t already toppled the rickety structure. His father had kept his fishing boat there, nothing fancy, just a sturdy utility boat with a 5-HP 4-cycle motor that they had taken out on a regular basis for their excursions on the nearby Tennessee River. Nolan had sold Bill Perdue’s boat less than six months after his marriage to Bill’s widow. Jack and Maleah had watched from the kitchen window as the new owner hitched the boat trailer to his truck and drove away. While holding his arm comfortingly around Maleah’s trembling shoulders as she cried, it had been all the thirteen-year-old Jack could do not to cry himself. Selling their father’s boat had been the least of Nolan Reaves’s crimes, but it had been a forerunner of things to come.

Jack inhaled deeply, taking in the sweet smell of honeysuckles covering the back fence. His stepfather had kept the wayward vine cut to the ground, calling it an insect magnet and otherwise worthless. Jack allowed his gaze to travel over the overgrown shrubbery and the ankle-deep grass. Nolan had been a stickler for keeping the yard neat. Flowers were not allowed, despite the fact that Jack’s mother had loved them. He would never forget the expression on her face when Nolan had cut down every bush in her beloved rose garden and then dug up the roots and burned them.

Jack finished his coffee, set the mug on the ground and marched toward the carriage house. He swung open the wooden gate that led from the backyard to the gravel drive. The closer each step took him to the side door of the carriage house, the louder and faster his heart beat. The last time his stepfather had beaten him, he had been a sophomore in high school and had just turned sixteen. He had stood there and taken the punishment Nolan Reaves administered with such deliberate pleasure. A strap across Jack’s back, butt and legs. That time, the beating was not to atone for a mistake Nolan believed Jack had made, but one he thought Maleah had made. Three years earlier, after the first time Jack saw the bloody stripes across his eight-year-old sister’s legs, he had made a bargain with the devil—from that day forward, he would take his own punishment and Maleah’s, too. The deal had seemed to please Nolan, who took a sick delight in beating the daylights out of Jack on a regular basis.

Jack’s hand trembled—actually shook like he had palsy—when he grasped the doorknob. Son of a bitch! Old demons died hard. He was a trained soldier, an Army Ranger, one of the best of the best, and yet here he was acting like a scared kid.

The boogeyman is dead. Remember? And even if he were still alive, there would be no reason to fear him.

He tightened his grip on the doorknob, turned it and opened the door. Nolan had always kept the door locked. Jack had no idea where the key was or even if there was a key. Neither he nor Maleah had mentioned the carriage house when they had discussed the possibility of him living here.

Leaving the door wide open, Jack entered the dark, dank interior of his teenage hell. In the shadowy darkness, he could make out the workbench, the rows of waist-high toolboxes, the table saw, the push mower, the Weed Eater and various other yard-work devices. His gaze crawled over the dirt floor, around the filthy windows and cobweb-infested walls, to the triangular wooden ceiling. He stopped and stared at the row of menacing leather straps that hung across the back wall. He counted them. Six. At one time or another, Jack had felt the painful sting of each strap.

“You don’t have to do this, you know.” Lorie Hammonds poured herself a second cup of coffee, laced it liberally with sugar and cream and set the purple mug on the bar that separated the kitchen from the den.

Cathy glanced at a silk-nightgown-clad Lorie as she hoisted herself up on the bronze metal barstool, picked up her cup and took a sip. Lorie was thirty-five, a year older than Cathy, and sophisticated and worldly-wise. She was also beautiful in a voluptuous, sultry way that drew men to her like bears to honey. Her long, auburn hair hung freely over her bare shoulders, streaks of strawberry-blond highlights framing her oval face. She stared pensively at Cathy, a concerned look in her chocolate-brown eyes.

“Call your mother and tell her to bring Seth over here this afternoon,” Lorie said. “Just because J.B. and Mona demanded a command performance doesn’t mean you have to oblige them.”

Cathy sighed. “They expected me to show up for services this morning, with Mother. I’m surprised she hasn’t called me by now.” Cathy glanced at the kitchen wall-clock. “Church probably let out about fifteen minutes ago.”

“If you weren’t ready to make an appearance at church today, what makes you think you’re ready for a family dinner?”

“I have to be ready. I want to see Seth. I need to talk to him. And by agreeing to dinner with my in-laws and my mother, I’m showing all of them that I am more than willing to meet them halfway. The last thing I want is to alienate Mona and J.B.”

Her mother was another matter entirely. There had been a time when she had jumped through hoops to please her mother. But after a year of therapy, Cathy had come to realize that pleasing Elaine Nelson was impossible. Pleasing her in-laws might be just as impossible, but she felt she at least had to try because they were her son’s legal guardians, something she intended to change as soon as possible. And for Seth’s sake and in honor of Mark’s memory, she intended to remain on good terms with the Cantrells.

“Want some advice?” Lorie asked.

“Something tells me that you’re giving it to me whether I want it or not.”

“Just come right out and tell Mark’s parents that you plan to find a house soon, and, when you do, you expect Seth to live with you.”

“What if Seth doesn’t want to leave his grandparents? After all, he’s been living with them for a year now and—”

“You’re his mother. He loves you. He’ll want to live with you.”

“I’m a mother who had a nervous breakdown and fell apart in front of him. Every time he came to see me at Haven Home, I could tell how nervous he was just being around me, as if he was afraid I’d go loco at any minute.”

“The more time you spend with Seth, the more he’s going to see that you’re the wonderful mother who raised him.” Lorie took another sip of coffee.

“But that’s just it,” Cathy said. “I’m not that same person. I’m different.”

“Yeah, I know, but you’re still Seth’s mother. You still love him. He’s still the most important person in your life. None of that has changed.” Grinning, Lorie cupped the purple mug in her hands. “Besides that, you’re different in a good way.”

Cathy nodded agreement. The changes in her were good changes. She had no doubts about that fact. She was stronger, more confident, more independent and absolutely determined to never, under any circumstances, allow anyone or anything to undermine her new, hard-won self-confidence. Gone forever was the meek, subordinate pleaser who had deliberately buried the real Cathy Nelson Cantrell deep inside her.

“You’re right.” Cathy straightened the Peter Pan collar on her simple, navy blue shirtwaist dress, touched the single strand of pearls resting on her chest and smoothed the pleated shirt. “How do I look?”

Lorie inspected her from head to toe. “We need to go shopping and buy you a new wardrobe. God, honey, that dress is awful. It screams dowdy housewife.”

Cathy smiled. “Mark liked this dress. It’s suitable attire for a minister’s wife. J.B. and Mona will approve.”

Lorie shook her head. “I thought trying to please other people is no longer on your agenda.”

“It’s not, but just for today I don’t want to do anything to antagonize my in-laws. I want them to turn Seth over to me without a fight, and if that means placating them, at least temporarily, I’m willing to make that compromise.”

“And if they’re not willing to meet you halfway, just remind them that your wicked friend, Lorie, has Elliott Floyd’s phone number on speed dial. Everyone in North Alabama knows Elliott is a top-notch attorney who hasn’t lost a case in the past fifteen years.”

Mona and J.B. Cantrell had lived in the same house since they were newlyweds. The house had belonged to J.B.’s parents, with whom the couple had lived their entire married life, until his father died eighteen years ago and his mother had moved to an assisted-living facility. The elder Mrs. Cantrell had died four years ago at the age of eighty-nine. Mark’s paternal grandmother had disliked Cathy on sight and had made her disapproval abundantly clear to everyone. J.B. had always been cordial to Cathy, but she suspected he shared his mother’s opinion of her as an unsuitable mate for “our Mark.” On the other hand, Mona had been friendly and had accepted her from the moment Mark announced their engagement.

“I’ve always wanted a daughter,” Mona had said as she’d placed a kiss on Cathy’s cheek.

From that day forward, Cathy had used her mother-in-law as a role model, hoping to please Mark, his father and his grandmother in the same way Mona did. And over the years, that was exactly what she had done—proven herself to be a supportive, agreeable, above-reproach helpmate. In retrospect, she now realized that what she had become was an almost robotic doormat.

She parked Lorie’s Edge in the driveway, but after killing the motor, she sat there for a few minutes, garnering her courage.

She could do this. She had to do this!

While giving herself a pep talk, she ran her gaze over the 1940s bungalow. The original wood-shingled exterior had been covered with red brick sometime in the sixties. Black shutters and a black architectural roof added to the traditional appearance of the house, as did the six-foot-high white picket fence surrounding the backyard. Mona’s green thumb was evident in the beauty of her late-blooming azaleas and various springtime flowers dotting the flower beds.

Cathy got out of the SUV, squared her shoulders and marched confidently to the front porch. When she reached out to ring the doorbell, the front door swung open and her mother shoved her backward as she came out onto the porch and closed the storm door behind her.

“Why weren’t you at church this morning?” Elaine demanded, her hazel-blue eyes filled with condemnation.

“Hello, Mother. Nice to see you, too.”

Elaine Nelson was a petite brunette who had allowed her hair to go salt-and-pepper in her late forties. Neat and attractive, she always looked her best.

“Do not be sarcastic with me, Catherine Amelia. I have your best interests at heart, as I always have.” Elaine frowned, deepening the soft age lines around her eyes and mouth. “People asked about you. You were expected. If you have any hopes of returning to your old life, you have to prove to everyone that you aren’t a raving lunatic just because you spent a year in that awful place.” The last half of her sentence came out in a soft, embarrassed whisper.

Cathy knew her mother was ashamed of the fact that she had checked herself into Haven Home, horribly ashamed that the good people of Dunmore knew Mark Cantrell’s widow had suffered a nervous breakdown. Nothing was more important to Elaine Nelson than keeping up appearances. The motto by which she lived was What will people think?

“I will probably be at church next Sunday.” Cathy looked directly at her mother, a sympathetic smile on her lips but solid-steel determination in her heart. Her mother had bullied her for the last time. “But if or when I go to church, it will be my decision, not yours.” She slipped her hand around and behind her mother and reached for the storm-door handle.

Elaine clutched Cathy’s shoulder, but before she could utter another chastising word, the door opened and Seth looked outside at the two of them.

“Is everything all right?” he asked, his azure-blue eyes searching her face for a truthful answer.

“Everything is fine,” Cathy lied. “Grandmother was just welcoming me home.”

The tension in her son’s handsome face relaxed, and he smiled as he held open the door. Cathy paused when she entered the house and hesitantly lifted her hand to caress Seth’s face. He leaned over and kissed her cheek.

“I’m glad you’re okay now,” he said. She heard the unasked question: You are all right now, aren’t you, Mom? “Nana and Granddad thought you’d be at church this morning. I looked for you.”

More than anything, Cathy wanted to wrap her arms around Seth and hug him. He might be six feet tall and have to shave every day, but he was still her baby. Her heart ached with love for him.

“I wasn’t quite ready to see everyone at church. Maybe next Sunday.”

“Or you could try Wednesday night services,” Seth suggested. “Fewer people.”

How very wise her almost sixteen-year-old son was. “You’re right. I think Wednesday night would be a better time.”

Only after Seth reached down and took her hand did she realize how truly nervous she was. Undoubtedly her astute son had realized she was trembling ever so slightly and wanted to give her his support. He led her into the living room, where J.B. and Mona stood side by side in front of the fireplace, and by the expressions on their faces she could tell that they were as uncertain about this first meeting as she was. Her plump, blond mother-in-law could be extremely attractive if she wore a little makeup, dressed in something other than polyester and didn’t wear her hair in a neat little bun at the nape of her neck. On the other hand, J.B. was a good-looking silver-haired man who dressed fit to kill; he was a strutting peacock, the exact opposite of his brown-hen wife.

Cathy caught a glimpse of her mother as Elaine eased up alongside her.

“Cathy overslept this morning,” Elaine said. “The trip from Birmingham—”

“I didn’t oversleep,” Cathy corrected. “I’m sorry if I disappointed all of you by not showing up for church this morning, but the truth is that I simply wasn’t ready to see anyone other than Lorie and the four of you.”

Mona looked pleadingly at her husband.

J.B. cleared his throat and then said, “There’s always next Sunday.”

“Of course there is.” Mona rushed toward Cathy, opened her arms and hugged her. When she released Cathy, she wiped the tears from her eyes. “It is so good to have you home where you belong. We’ve missed you, each of us, but Seth most of all.”

Cathy breathed a tentative sigh of relief. Maybe Lorie was wrong. Maybe everything was going to be all right. Maybe her in-laws understood that Seth belonged with her.

I hate him. He is such a fake, pretending to be a man of God, acting the part of a priest. Father Brian is young and handsome and charming—and a pedophile. At these interfaith Sunday afternoon socials, I’ve noticed how friendly he is with all the children, but especially the boys. Those poor babies being molested by that monster. It is up to me to put a stop to his evil.

He thinks no one suspects, that because none of the children have told anyone about what he’s doing, he is safe. He’s not safe. Not from me. I am God’s instrument of punishment. I have been appointed to be judge, jury and executioner. It is my duty to seek out and destroy evil, the kind of evil that hides behind a priest’s robes, a minister’s white collar and a preacher’s holier-than-thou façade.

No one understands why Mark Cantrell and Charles Randolph had to be punished. Mark Cantrell. Good Saint Mark. No one knew about his secret sin. But I knew. I saw him with that woman—a woman who was not his wife—stroking her, caressing her. He knew I saw him, and he even tried to explain, but I didn’t believe his lies. He claimed he was merely comforting her when she fell apart in his arms because she had miscarried for the third time in less than two years. And Charles Randolph had stolen money from his church, but instead of being sent to prison, he was going to be allowed to resign from the ministry and simply repay what he had taken. Couldn’t they see that he deserved God’s wrath?

Mark Cantrell had been a liar. A fornicator. A sinner. Charles Randolph had been a liar and a thief. A sinner. And Father Brian is pure evil, a monster disguised as a kind and caring priest.

You’re next. I’m coming for you. Soon.

“And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity.” Isaiah 13:11.

God’s wrath will rain down on you, Father Brian, and you will burn in Hell’s fire.

Chapter Three

Meaningful conversation at the dinner table had been nonexistent. Idle chitchat was minimal, even though Mona had done her best to keep the mood light and cheerful. Despite her best efforts to defuse the tension in the room, Mona had received little cooperation from J.B. and Elaine. Seth had commented a couple of times in response to questions Cathy had asked him, but he was a bright boy and quickly realized the less said the better. In this household, everyone had learned to take their cues from J.B. And Cathy’s father-in-law was not in a talkative mood this Sunday.

When Cathy offered to help clear away the table and clean up in the kitchen, Mona smiled and said, “Don’t bother, dear. Elaine will help me. I know you want to spend some time with Seth.” Mona glanced at J.B., silently pleading with him.

A tiny frisson of foreboding jangled along Cathy’s nerve endings. Reading between the lines of her mother-in-law’s statement, she wondered if this had been Mona’s subtle way of saying You can visit him here, but J.B. will not allow you to take him away from us.

“Thank you,” Cathy replied, her voice strong and even, not indicating the unease she felt. “Seth, why don’t you and I take a walk? It’s a lovely afternoon.”

Seth stopped midstride on his way out of the dining room and glanced back at his grandfather, obviously seeking permission. Damn it, I’m your mother, she wanted to scream. You don’t have to ask him if you can take a walk with me.

J.B. nodded. “Don’t be long. Remember you need to go over your song a few times before tonight’s services.”

“I remember, Granddad,” Seth said. “We’ll just walk a few blocks.”

Cathy felt the immediate release of tension that permeated the room, as if everyone had been holding their breaths, waiting for J.B.’s decision. Her father-in-law was not a bad man, not evil or cruel, but he adhered to the old biblical teachings that a man ruled his household, his wife and his children. His word was law.

Mark had been reared in a home where his mother had been subservient to his father, and although he had tended to be more modern in his thinking, on occasion Cathy had seen glimpses of J.B. in Mark. For the most part, he had inherited his mother’s gentle, sweet nature, but Cathy had learned early on in their marriage that when they did things Mark’s way, it made life easier for all of them.

As soon as Cathy and Seth left the house, she asked, “What was that about your going over a song for tonight’s services?”

“Don’t you remember, Mom? Once a month, on Sunday night, the teenage guys take turns acting as the song leader.”

“Oh. Yes, of course. If I’d known you were going to be doing that this evening, I’d have made plans to be there.”

He shrugged as they left the porch. “It’s no big deal. Besides, we’ll do it again next month.”

“I’ll be there then.”

“Yeah, sure.”

They walked side by side, heading west toward the center of town, which was only four blocks away. A couple of times, neighbors sitting on their front porches or out in their front yards gawked as they passed, as if they were shocked to see the crazy widow walking the streets with her son. A couple of neighbors threw up a hand, waved and spoke. Seth returned their greetings.

One block passed and then another, neither she nor her son speaking to each other again. Cathy hated the awkward silence. It was as if she and her own child were strangers. Just make conversation, she told herself. Nothing heavy.

“School’s out in a couple of weeks, huh?”

“Ten days,” he said. “Exams are next Thursday and Friday.”

“I can hardly believe that my baby boy will be a junior in high school this fall. It seems like only a few years ago that you were in kindergarten.”

“Yeah, that’s what Nana says all the time.”

“Your nana is a wonderful lady,” Cathy told him, completely sincere. She loved Mona, who had in many ways been more of a mother to her in the past sixteen years than her own mother had ever been. “I’m grateful that she’s been here for you while I’ve been gone.”

Seth didn’t respond. He just kept walking at a slow, steady pace, keeping his gaze fixed straight ahead.

They crossed the intersection at Mulberry and Fifth without encountering even one vehicle. Dunmore was quiet and peaceful on Sunday midafternoons. After church, people either went home or out to eat. By now everyone had reached their destination.

“What are your plans for the summer?” she asked. “Are you doing anything special? Playing ball or—”

Seth stopped abruptly. “Mom, I play baseball and football. Have you forgotten that, too?” He stared at her, studying her with his intense, narrowed gaze.

“No, of course I didn’t forget. I just…The question came out before I thought. I’ve been trying so hard to think of something to say, to come up with casual conversation.” She looked him square in the eye. “I’m fine, honey. Don’t worry. I’m not sick anymore. I’m completely well.”

His gaze hardened. His brow wrinkled.

She could tell that he desperately wanted to believe her. But Seth had been there that day, when she had run down the hall, alternately laughing and crying hysterically before locking herself in her bedroom and refusing to come out. He had stood outside the door, beating on it, begging her to open up and let him come in. He had listened to the sounds of her emotional meltdown, the laughing and crying that she could not control. She had known she was losing it, but she had been unable to stop.

She vaguely remembered that sometime later, her mother had knocked on the door, called her name and demanded she stop all the nonsense and come out immediately.

“Catherine, you’re frightening your son.” When she hadn’t responded, her mother had continued calling her name over and over. “Cathy? Cathy, can you hear me? Cathy!”

They would never forget what she had said to her mother that day before she fell across the bed in a fit of uncontrollable, manic laughter.

“Cathy’s not here. Cathy’s dead.”

That had been a year ago. A year of therapy. A year of healing. A year of learning to accept herself as she was, to acknowledge her true feelings and to come into her own as a grown woman. And most importantly, to forgive herself for not being perfect. Her words that day had been prophetic. The old Cathy was dead.

She reached out and grasped Seth’s arm. “I’ll be there for every game from now on. I promise.”

“Okay. Sure.”

She saw a glimmer of hope in his beautiful blue eyes.

She had disappointed him, had let him down. She would never allow that to happen again. But he didn’t know that. It was up to her to prove to him that she was completely well, that she was whole and that for the rest of his life he could count on her.

She released her tight grip on his arm. “You know I’m staying with Lorie, but just for a little while. I plan to find a house for us soon. I’m going to start looking next week.”

“Mom, I…I can’t come and live with you.” He stared down at the sidewalk, avoiding direct eye contact.

“Of course you can, and you will. I’m your mother. You belong with me.”

Don’t push so hard. Don’t demand. Ask. “I want you to live with me. Don’t you want that, too?”

“Granddad says you’re not ready for the responsibility, that you might not ever be. He thinks I should stay with him and Nana until I leave for college in a few years.” With his head still bowed, he lifted his gaze just enough to glance at her quickly. “You can visit me anytime you want, and…and once you’re settled in and all, I could come visit you.”

I don’t want you to visit me. I want you to live with me. “That’s what J.B. wants. What do you want, Seth?”

That’s it, Cathy. Put your son on the spot. Make him choose between you and his grandfather.

“Mom, I don’t want to hurt your feelings…”

“If you want to stay with J.B. and Mona for a little while longer, then that’s what you’ll do.” Agreeing to give up her son even for a few more weeks was one of the most difficult things she’d ever done. “I’ll find a house for us…for me. And I’ll go back to work at the antique shop with Lorie. I’ll visit you, and you’ll visit me. We’ll take this one day at a time. Does that work for you?”

“Yes, ma’am.” His lips curved into a hesitant smile. “Thanks, Mom, for…Well, for…”

“It’s only another block into town,” she said. “Want to stop at the Ice Palace and get Cherry Cokes?”

“Yeah, that sounds great.”

Baby steps. One day at a time. That was how she had recovered. And it was the way she would regain her son’s trust.

On her drive home from the interfaith Sunday afternoon social she had attended at St. Mary’s in Huntsville this afternoon, Lorie questioned her motives for taking part in any event even vaguely associated with religion. Her strict Baptist upbringing, her parents both fanatics of the first order, had turned her against religion as a teenager. It had seemed to her that everything that was fun was also a sin. And if there was one thing Lorie had learned about the hard way, it was sin. She had paid a heavy price for her teenage rebellion. She had lost her parents. They had never been able to forgive her for what her father had called her unforgivable sins. She had lost her innocence, her self-respect and almost her life. And she had lost the only man she had ever truly loved.

Religion was just a word to her, and up until the past few years, it had been an ugly word. She had blamed her youthful rebellion and her gradual descent into degradation and shame on religion. But her friendship with Reverend Patsy Floyd had shown her that it was not religion but religious fanaticism that should be feared and avoided at all costs. Patsy was one of a handful of female Methodist ministers in Alabama. She taught love, understanding and forgiveness. The interfaith socials that brought young people of different religions together so that they could better understand one another had been Patsy’s brainchild. And although Lorie was still unable to bring herself to attend church services, she had agreed to help Patsy with the monthly socials held at various churches in North Alabama every month.

If she could help just one kid not to make the kind of mistakes she had made…

Originally, her motives for taking part in these socials had been completely selfless, but she had to admit that for the past six months she’d had a selfish motive. It gave her a chance to get to know Mike Birkett’s two kids, his eight-year-old daughter, Hannah, and his ten-year-old son, M.J. Being with Mike’s children was always a bittersweet experience. She knew that if she had never left Dunmore for the bright lights of Hollywood, California, seventeen years ago, Hannah and M.J. would probably be her children, hers and Mike’s.

Of all her many mistakes, leaving Mike was her biggest regret.

Jack tossed the last toolbox on the stack of garbage that he had thrown into a heap in the alley and then returned to the carriage house, which he had stripped to the bare walls. After removing a switchblade from his pants pocket, he cut down the corded leather straps from the ceiling. The whips were the last items to go. Clutching the straps in his hands as he fought the bad memories, Jack made his way across the backyard and flung them into the fire. They needed to be destroyed so that no one could ever use them again. Every damn thing that had belonged to Nolan Reaves was now either awaiting the garbage truck or smoldering in the large metal barrel that his stepfather had used to burn leaves and trash. He had thought about tearing the carriage house down to the ground, but if he did that he would erase the good memories along with the bad. Next week he’d get a carpenter in here to give him an estimate on what it would cost to restore the building.

It would take time and money to bring the old painted lady, the carriage house and the grounds back to the way they’d once been, but Jack had plenty of time and enough money so that he wouldn’t have to cut corners on the restoration. Odd how one night in the old homestead had convinced him to stay here in Dunmore, in his ancestral home, and somehow, someway, build a new life for himself.

He’d been so immersed in his thoughts that although he’d heard the car, he hadn’t noticed that it had stopped in his driveway. But he heard the crunch of gravel beneath the man’s feet as he approached. Just as Jack turned to face the intruder, the man spoke.

“Have you got a burn permit for that?” Mike Birkett asked, a wide grin on his deeply tanned face.

“Nope. Do I need one?” Jack swiped his palms down the front of his dirty jeans.

“I’ll let it pass this time,” Mike said. “But next time, get one. It won’t look right if my new deputy keeps breaking the law.”

Jack nodded. “Yeah, okay.” He ran his gaze over his old friend, who wore gray dress slacks and a white dress shirt with a charcoal gray collar. “Been to church?”

“Yeah, earlier today. Then the kids and I had lunch over at City Restaurant before I saw them off with Reverend Floyd for their monthly interfaith social.”

Jack chuckled. “You’ve done all right for yourself, haven’t you? A solid citizen. A real family man. The sheriff of the county, church every Sunday, a couple of kids.”

“I can’t complain. I’ve been damn lucky, and I know it, except…” Mike’s voice trailed off into thoughtful silence as he stared into the flames inside the barrel. Mike was one of the few people on earth who knew about the times when Nolan had beaten Jack with those leather straps. “I’m surprised you didn’t burn the place down.” He glanced at the carriage house.

“I thought about it.” Jack reached over and placed a hand on Mike’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about your wife. I should have come back for her funeral.”

Mike shrugged. “You called.”

“Yeah, five months later.”

“Don’t sweat it.”

“I haven’t been much of a friend, have I?”

“Good enough.”

Jack took a deep breath. Mike cleared his throat.

“I thought I’d run an idea by you,” Mike said. “That’s the reason I came over uninvited.”

“You never need an invitation.”

“Don’t happen to have a couple of beers in the house, do you?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” Jack hitched his thumb toward the back porch. “Want to come inside, or would you rather sit out here?” He glanced at the rusty metal lawn chairs on the porch.

“Let’s sit out here and enjoy this weather while it lasts. You know what it’ll be like in another month. Hot as hell and humid as a steam bath.”

“Take a seat. I’ll be right back.”

Jack returned with the last two beers he had in the refrigerator. Note to self: buy more beer. He handed his old buddy one of the cans, then sat down beside him in the faded green metal chair and popped the tab on his can. They stayed there, sipping the cold brews as they stared out at the large backyard, the pile of junk awaiting the garbage truck and the smoke spiraling up and away from the old trash barrel.

“So what’s this idea you want to run by me?”

Mike took another swig from his beer, then held the can between his spread knees. “I sheriff a small, mostly rural county, and our funds are limited.”

“Is this where you tell me you’ve realized you can’t afford another deputy?”

“I can afford you, but just barely,” Mike admitted. “I’m aware of the fact that you have some physical limitations, but I can’t see where that would keep you from becoming a good deputy.” Mike paused, obviously weighing his next words carefully. “I thought it might be best if we broke you into the job gradually.”

“Meaning?” Jack wasn’t sure he liked the sound of this.

“The sheriff ’s department doesn’t actually have anyone working our cold cases, but we’ve got several unsolved murders that family members have asked us to look into again. I thought it could be a good place for you to start.”

“Working the county’s cold cases?”

“Yeah. What do you think?”

“I think you’ve created a job for me, one that sounds a lot like charity.”

Mike finished off his beer, then crushed the can between his huge hands. “Damn it, man, that’s exactly what I didn’t want you to think. And it isn’t true. I need another deputy. Ernie Poole is retiring in a few months, and I need a man to fill his shoes. In the meantime, I want you to work these unsolved murder cases and get the county commissioners and the good citizens off my back.”

Okay, there was enough truth to Mike’s words for Jack to accept that he hadn’t been hired as an act of charity by his old high school buddy.

“How many cold-case murders?” Jack asked.

“Several.”

“Several as in three, six, ten…”

“Two,” Mike said.

“Two?”

Mike nodded. “I’ll have the files on both murders on your desk first thing in the morning. Look them over, study them, dig around to see if you can come up with anything that will shed a new light on either of them.”

“How old are the cases?”

“One is five years old. George Clayton, an old geezer, nearly eighty. Somebody robbed him and beat him to death. There were several suspects, but no real proof. We figured his nephew did it, but the boy had an airtight alibi.”

“Does the nephew still live around here?”

“He’s still in Alabama,” Mike said. “He was convicted of assault and battery and is serving time. He’s in the Limestone Correctional Facility.”

“What about the other case?”

“That murder case is eighteen months cold. We investigated, but didn’t come up with even one suspect.” Mike said. “There was another, similar murder over in Athens a year ago. The police chief and I compared notes and agreed that it could have been the same killer, but neither of us had a legit suspect.”

“Want to give me some details or…”

“Both our victim and the Athens victim were ministers. Ours a Church of Christ preacher and theirs a Lutheran priest. Both men were doused with gasoline and set on fire.”

“Damn.” Jack’s breath hissed between his clenched teeth. “Just the two murders? Nothing since?”

“That’s right. Just the two.”

“Any connection between the two victims other than the fact they were both clergymen?”

“We couldn’t find a link of any kind. As far as we know, Father Randolph and Brother Cantrell didn’t know each other, had never met, had no friends or family in common.”

“Brother Cantrell? Mark Cantrell?”

“Yeah, Mark Cantrell.”

“The guy Cathy Nelson married?”

“One and the same.”

“Cathy’s a widow?”

“Yep.”

Jack looked directly at Mike. “Once we get all the new deputy hoopla over with in the morning, I’ll take a look at those files and figure out where to go from there.”

“If you’re thinking about contacting Cathy…”

“Is there any reason I should?”

“None that pertains to her husband’s case,” Mike said. “Her statement is on file. She was never a suspect. She heard the killer’s voice from a distance, but couldn’t tell if it was male or female. There’s no reason to bother her unless we wind up reopening the case.”

“Agreed.”

Mike studied Jack. “Mind if I give you some advice?”

“About Cathy?”

“Yeah.”

“Go ahead.”

“Stay away from her. If you’ve got an itch that needs scratching, find another woman.”

“Are you warning me to stay away from the widow because you’ve already staked your claim?” Jack asked.

“Nope. Cathy’s just a friend. Nothing more. Never has been, never will be. But she’s a good woman who’s been to hell and back. I don’t want to see her hurt any more than she’s already been hurt.”

“And naturally, a guy like me would hurt her.” Jack grunted. “Don’t worry. I’m not interested in a good woman. I prefer the other kind.”

Chapter Four

“How’d you do on that Algebra exam?” Felicity Harper caught up with Seth just as he slammed his locker shut.

Although Felicity was a year older than he was, they were both sophomores because of when their birthdays fell during the calendar year.

He had caught a glimpse of her when they left Mr. Bange’s classroom. Although he hadn’t turned around to check, he had known she was following him. After being practically stalked by her for the past seven months, he’d become accustomed to her shadowing him and using any excuse she could find to get his attention. If only he’d moved a little faster, he might have gotten away before she cornered him. He had thought she might get caught up in the crowd of students milling around in the hallways long enough for him to get his backpack out of his locker and escape through the side entrance. No such luck.

It wasn’t that he disliked her. She was okay, considering she was a bit of a weirdo, and he was sort of flattered that she obviously had a crush on him. But she just wasn’t his type. Besides, since she was his mom’s best friend’s cousin, he had to try to be nice to her.

Seth shrugged. “I did okay on the exam, I think.”

“I’ll bet you aced it.” She gazed up at him adoringly. “You’re so smart.”

The way she stared at him gave him the creeps. Heck, most of the time she gave him the creeps. Felicity wore violet-colored contacts, circled her eyes with black liner and painted the lids with purple eye shadow. She wore black clothes nearly all the time and had ever since eighth grade, when she had gotten on some Goth kick. And that dagger tattoo on her neck turned him off completely, as did the small fire-breathing dragon circling her left wrist. She sure didn’t look like a preacher’s kid. Judging by her appearance, you’d never expect that her parents and older sister seemed pretty much normal.

“You don’t have any other exams today, do you?” Felicity asked.

Seth picked up his backpack off the floor and flung it over his shoulder. “Nope. I’m through for today.”

“Want a ride home?”

“Is your mother picking you up?” he asked.

“Nooo…” She dragged the word out, exasperation in her voice. “Don’t you remember? Charity got a new car for her eighteenth birthday last month. She won’t mind giving you a lift.”

His grandparents’ house was a good eight-block walk, one he made almost every day. Nana dropped him off at Dunmore High each morning, having overruled Granddad’s objections, something she seldom did. But his grandfather had expressly forbidden Nana to pick him up in the afternoons. He considered doing that would only coddle Seth.

He had overheard Granddad say to Nana, “You and Elaine spoil that boy way too much. He’ll never be a real man with his two grandmothers hovering over him the way y’all do.”

If today had been just another warm and sunny May day, he’d have opted to walk instead of considering catching a ride home with kooky Felicity and her sister, Charity. But it had been raining cats and dogs for the past hour, and he didn’t look forward to getting drenched in the downpour.

“Sure, thanks,” Seth said. “If you don’t think Charity will mind.”

Felicity lit up like a Christmas tree, as if his agreeing to accept a ride home had been an answer to her prayers. Yeah, okay, so he knew she liked him. She’d sort of had a thing for him for nearly a year now, even though he’d never done anything to encourage her. The last thing he’d ever want to do was hurt her feelings, but sooner or later he was going to have to tell her to back off.

“Come on.” Felicity grabbed his arm. “We’ve got to hurry. Charity will be waiting out front, and she can’t stay parked in the tow-away zone forever.”

They barely made it out the front door before Felicity popped open a huge black umbrella to shield them from the rain. She led him to the late-model Chevy, a reliable, sturdy vehicle that most teenagers wouldn’t be caught dead driving. She opened the back door and said, “Get in.”

Once he and Felicity were inside, Charity pulled out of the tow-away area, not glancing back at them or saying a word. It was only after Felicity had closed the umbrella and Seth had fastened his seat belt and looked forward that he noticed the girl sitting in the front seat with Charity. He knew, without seeing her face, who she was. His heartbeat accelerated. His face flushed. And his penis came alive.

Damn! Get that thing under control.

While he concentrated on how his body was reacting to the beautiful Missy Hovater, she turned around and smiled at him.

“Hi, Seth.”

God, she knew his name!

Don’t be an idiot, of course she knows your name. Her father took your dad’s job. He’s the minister where you and your grandparents go to church. You’re in Sunday school class with her.

“Hi, Missy.” His words came out sounding like a frog’s croak.

When Missy laughed, the dimples in her cheeks deepened and her eyes sparkled.

Felicity punched him in the ribs and giggled. “What’s up with that voice? Were you trying to do an imitation of a bullfrog?”

Shit!

Oh, damn!

I shouldn’t even think those words. It’s wrong to curse, even in your mind. And I shouldn’t be fighting a hard-on. Sins of the flesh. Stay chaste. Don’t think evil thoughts. Oh, God, help me.

Seth didn’t know which was worse—being concerned about his numerous sins or the red flush no doubt covering his face. It was hell being sixteen—well, almost sixteen—and no one except another teenager could possibly understand how he felt right this minute. His grandparents certainly wouldn’t understand.

“Yeah,” Seth managed to say in his normal voice. “I’m practicing for tryouts for the school play, The Frog Prince.”

When everyone laughed, even the quiet, shy Charity, Seth relaxed.

He could feel Felicity watching him, but he couldn’t manage to take his eyes off Missy. She had to be the prettiest girl he’d ever seen, every feature on her face perfect, and her body was bad, really bad. He hated to admit it, but the first thing he had noticed about her, after her gorgeous face and mane of blond hair, was her big boobs. He might be a preacher’s son and the grandson of a church elder, but he was human and couldn’t help it if a girl’s breasts fascinated him.

Felicity leaned against him, her long, straight black hair brushing his arm, her actions demanding his attention. When he glanced at her, he realized she was practically in his face.

“Why don’t you come home with us?” Felicity asked. “Mom will fix us all lunch, and then you and I can study for our American History test together.”

“I don’t know.” Think of some excuse other than your grandmother is expecting you to come home. “I sort of promised Tyler that we’d hang out together later today.”

“So call him and invite him over. Mom won’t mind. She loves for us to have company, doesn’t she, Charity?” When her sister didn’t respond, Felicity punched the back of her sister’s seat.

“Uh, no, Mother won’t mind at all,” Charity said.

“I’m going home with Charity and spending the afternoon,” Missy told him. “I don’t like to disturb my father when he’s busy working on a sermon.”

“I…uh…sure, thanks, I’d like to have lunch with y’all.” Liar. You don’t want to have lunch with all of them, only with Missy. “But I need to give Nana a quick call, so she won’t worry. You know how grandmothers are.”

Seth fumbled in his pocket and managed to retrieve his phone without dropping it. Please, God, let Nana answer and not Granddad. Nana wouldn’t give him a hard time about not coming straight home. He understood that Granddad was strict with him for his own good, just as his own dad would have been. But sometimes he wished his grandfather could remember what it was like to be nearly sixteen.

Cathy looked at the address written on the notepad: 121 West Fourth Street. This had to be a mistake. That was the address for the old Perdue house. Hadn’t Mona mentioned something about that house being empty, that it had been up for sale for nearly six months? Maybe someone had bought the place, and the new owner needed interior-decorating advice, an extra service they provided at Treasures of the Past Antiques and Interiors.

“Is something wrong?” Ruth Ann Harper asked. “You have the strangest expression on your face.”

Cathy forced a smile. She liked Ruth Ann, who was married to Lorie’s cousin, the local First Baptist Church’s minister. Ruth Ann had been working part-time helping Lorie with the antique shop while Cathy had been at Haven Home.

“No, nothing’s wrong. I was just puzzled by the address. I didn’t realize anyone had bought the old Perdue house.” Cathy looked right at Ruth Ann. “Are you sure you wrote down the correct address?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“And Lorie told you to ask me to meet with the client at four-thirty this afternoon at this address?”

“Yes.” Ruth Ann looked puzzled. “When she phoned from the auction in Fayetteville, I told her about the gentleman who had called and asked if y’all could help him with decorating his house. He said it was an old Victorian, that he was having some restoration work done on the place and he didn’t know anything about decorating.”

“Did he happen to tell you his name and if he and his wife would be meeting with me or…?”

“He didn’t mention a wife. And come to think of it, he didn’t give me his name. I think he thought I knew who he was. How, I don’t know. Local gossip, maybe.”

“I see. And you told Lorie which house it was? You mentioned the address to her, right?”

“Well, actually, no, I don’t think I mentioned the address. I just told her what the man had said, and she told me to ask you to meet with him since she wouldn’t make it back from the auction by four-thirty.”

“Oh.”

“Is there a problem of some kind?”

Cathy shook her head. “No, no problem at all.” She checked her wristwatch. “I’d better leave now since it’s already four-twenty. Would you mind closing up today? It would save me from having to come back instead of going straight home. Seth is coming for dinner tonight.”

“He’s such a fine young man. So well mannered and friendly,” Ruth Ann said. “He was at the house today for lunch. He came by with my girls and their friend Missy after exams. I think my youngest has a major crush on him. And God knows he’d be a wonderful influence on her. I’m afraid Felicity is going through a rebellious stage.”

“Good for her.”

Cathy didn’t realize she had spoken out loud until she saw the surprised expression on Ruth Ann’s face. Her dark eyes widened, and her mouth opened in a half-smile/halffrown, as if she was uncertain how to take Cathy’s comment.

“I’m sure you don’t have anything to worry about with either of your girls, not with the wonderful example you and John Earl have always set for them. I just think it’s good to allow teenagers to think for themselves and for them not to always be expected to do everything their parents want them to do.”

“Actually, I agree with you. Despite the slight embarrassment Felicity’s tattoos, outlandish makeup and black attire cause us, John Earl and I believe that allowing her the freedom to express herself will help her grow up to be her own person, a young woman we’ll be quite proud of.”

“You’re very wise. Your girls are so lucky to have a mother like you.” Cathy took the car keys out of her purse, hung the strap over her shoulder and headed for the back door. “See you tomorrow.”

Ruth Ann waved as Cathy left the shop.

She paused beneath the metal canopy over the door and looked up at the gray sky. The morning’s heavy rain had left puddles of standing water. The light drizzle falling now wasn’t discernible to the eye, but when she walked toward her parked SUV, she felt the light moisture misting her face.

With her consent, her in-laws had sold Mark’s Lexus and put the money in Seth’s college fund, and they had given Cathy’s ten-year-old Jeep Cherokee to Elaine, who had stored it in her garage.

“I had it serviced for you when I found out you were coming home,” her mother had told her. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be driving, but I assumed you would. After all, you wouldn’t have left that place if you weren’t completely well, would you?”

Ignoring the comment about her mental health, Cathy had simply said “Thank you, Mother,” taken the keys and left. One of the many truths she had accepted while at Haven Home was the fact that Elaine Nelson would never change. She couldn’t change her mother, but she could change the way she reacted to her.

Cathy slid behind the wheel, started the engine and sat there in the alley behind the antique shop. During the eight days she had been back in Dunmore, she had met and survived several challenges. Not allowing her mother to intimidate her had actually been easier than she’d thought it would be. But facing her in-laws had not been easy, nor had accepting the fact that she would have to regain her son’s trust before she could fight the Cantrells for custody. One of the lesser challenges had been forcing herself to pretend she didn’t hear the whispers or notice the curious stares when she attended Sunday morning services yesterday. And whenever a customer commented about her year away and how horrible it must have been in that place, she simply forced a smile and told them it was wonderful to be home and back at work.

Of all the challenges that she had known she would face and could deal with, helping the new owner decorate the old Perdue house had not been one of them.

You can do this. It’s just a house. Mr. and Mrs. Reaves are both dead. Maleah lives somewhere in the Knoxville area. And Jack…

She gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckled strength.

“Jackson Perdue.” There, she’d said his name aloud, and the earth hadn’t opened up and swallowed her. God hadn’t struck her dead. “Jack.” She spoke his name softly.

Cathy wasn’t surprised that Jack and Maleah had sold their mother’s house, considering how much they had both hated their stepfather and how quickly they had both left home when each had turned eighteen. They had returned briefly for their mother’s funeral five years ago. She had caught a glimpse of them, from the back of the church, when she had slipped in and sat in the very last pew. She hadn’t spoken to either of them at the church and hadn’t gone to the cemetery or to the house.

Cathy put the SUV in reverse, backed up and drove down the alley to the side street. On the short drive from Main Street, where their shop was located, to West Fourth, she wondered about the people who had bought the old house. Were they a young couple, middle-aged or elderly? Were they locals or people from another town or even another state?

When she parked in the gravel drive at 121 West Fourth, she noticed the door to the carriage house stood wide open. The interior of the in-need-of-repair structure was bare to the bones. Apparently the new owners had already started clearing out things in preparation for the renovations. She got out of the Jeep and searched for the owner’s vehicle, but didn’t see one. Was it possible the potential client had forgotten about their appointment? If no one was here, she could wait for them, but not for long. Seth was coming to Lorie’s tonight for dinner. Nothing, not even a rich client, was more important.

As she made her way to the sidewalk, her leather high heels marring up in the wet ground, she inspected the threestory house, one of several Victorian painted ladies that still graced the downtown streets of Dunmore. How dark and dreary this place looked, the gray paint peeling, the faded white shutters in need of repair, the wide porch empty. She rang the doorbell.

Seconds ticked by and quickly turned into minutes.

She rang the doorbell again.

Silence.

Apparently no one was at home. Should she go or should she wait?

Before she could decide, a sheriff ’s car zipped into the drive and pulled up alongside her SUV. She turned and watched as the tall, muscular man in uniform emerged from the Crown Victoria.

As he approached the front porch, Cathy’s chest tightened. Her heartbeat accelerated. With slow, easy strides, he came up the walkway. His hair was darker now, a rich sandy blond, and just a tad longer than a regulation military cut. When he stepped up on the porch, he removed his sunglasses, squinted and stared at her.

“Sorry I’m a few minutes late,” he said, then stopped dead still when less than six feet separated them.

He was the same and yet different. Older, broader shouldered, harder. And battle scarred. The boyish smoothness of his handsome face was gone, replaced with an imperfect roughness.

“Hello, Jack.”

He stood there speechless, staring at Cathy Nelson. No, not Cathy Nelson—Cathy Cantrell, Mark Cantrell’s widow. He had figured that sooner or later he’d run into her, considering that Dunmore was a small town. But he sure as hell hadn’t expected to react this way—as if he’d been hit between the eyes with a two-by-four.

As a teenager, Cathy had been a pretty girl in her own shy, sweet way. But the woman standing there, her bluegreen eyes fixed on his face, her mouth open in shock as if she’d seen a ghost, was more than pretty. She was beautiful. Her long brown hair, flowing freely around her shoulders, shimmered with damp highlights caused by the misty rain. Her body had matured. Her breasts were fuller than he remembered, and she was slimmer. Not skinny, just trim.

“Hello, Cathy.”

She surveyed him from head to toe, taking in his deputy’s uniform. “I—I wasn’t expecting to see you. I thought you and Maleah had probably sold the house.”

“I thought I left my name when I called. Maybe I didn’t. I guess you hadn’t heard that Mike Birkett hired me as a deputy. I’ve moved back to Dunmore.”

“Permanently?”

He nodded. “Possibly. Depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“If the deputy job works out.”

“Yes, of course. You’ve left the army?”

“Yeah.”

She glanced at the porch and front of the house. “And you’re going to restore this place?”

“That’s the plan.” When he moved toward her, she backed up as if she were afraid of him. Odd. “Why don’t you come on inside and take a look? I can put on some coffee, or, if you prefer, there’s beer in the—No beer. As I recall, you don’t drink. Unless your tastes have changed.”

She stepped out of his way as he retrieved the key from his pocket and headed for the front door. “I wasn’t sure who would show up,” Jack said. “I sort of thought it would be Lorie.”

“Lorie’s at an auction in Fayetteville.”

Jack held open the front door. “Come on in.”

When he noted her hesitation, he forced a wide smile, hoping to put her at ease. Apparently at least a part of the shy young girl he had once known still existed inside the adult Cathy.

“How about some coffee?” Jack asked. “We can go in the kitchen and talk. I can explain what I want to do to this old place, and you can tell me what you think.”

“All right.” After she entered the house, he came in behind her. Then she followed him to the kitchen. “If you’d prefer working with Lorie, we can reschedule. I’ve been away from the business for nearly a year, so I might be a little rusty.”

She was nervous.

Was she nervous because she was alone with him or because she only recently had left a mental-rehab center and was having difficulty readjusting?

“You’ll do just fine,” he said. “If you’d like the job. I haven’t even hired a contractor yet. What I need from you is someone who knows something about restoring and decorating historical houses, about fine antiques and things like that. I know little to nothing. I want this place to look the way it did when I was a kid, only better. Modern bathrooms, a modern kitchen…”

“The kitchen and bathrooms could be modern and yet reflect the Victorian style of the house. Claw-foot tubs in the bathrooms. A farmhouse sink in the kitchen. Cabinetry that has the look of antique furniture.” Cathy’s face lit up as she talked, her expression reflecting her enthusiasm about the proposed project. “This house could easily be a showplace.” She glanced at him, her gaze almost timid. “Returning this house to her former glory will be expensive.”

Jack grinned. “And you’re wondering how I can afford it on a deputy’s salary.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that you can’t afford—”

“I’ve invested my money wisely,” he told her. “Nearly twenty years in the army with no wife and kids, I was able to save a lot, and I made some lucrative investments over the years.”

“I’m sorry. It’s really none of my business.”

“Let me put on the coffee. Then, if you’d like, I’ll walk you through the house. You’ve never been inside before, have you?”

“Uh…no. No, I haven’t,” she lied. She had been here one other time.

Jack hurriedly prepared the coffeemaker and then began the tour of his home, taking her from room to room.

When he had phoned Treasures of the Past and set up this appointment, he had hoped Cathy would show up. Mike had warned him to stay away from her. During this past week, as he had gone over the file on Mark Cantrell’s murder, he had asked Mike a number of questions and had learned about the hell Cathy had been through these past eighteen months. The last thing he wanted to do was create more problems in her life. But he had been curious about Cathy. His Cathy. The only girl who had ever broken his heart.

Chapter Five

Father Brian hung up the telephone and immediately wondered if he had made a mistake by agreeing too quickly to his caller’s request. But how could he have refused such a pitiful plea for help? Not only was it his duty to help others, but he felt a deep kinship with the oppressed, children and teens in particular, because of what he had been through as a young boy. Having been subjected to drug-addicted parents who, stoned out of their minds most of the time, had beaten him on a regular basis, he knew how truly helpless the young could feel and how hopeless their lives could be. He had run away at thirteen and lived on the streets, where he had come into contact with the vilest human beings imaginable. But a kind and caring priest in Louisville had saved his life, both literally and figuratively.

Father James had not only taught the goodness of our Lord and Savior to Brian but had shown him that goodness in action on a daily basis. Thanks to the gentle old priest, Brian had come to realize that ministering to others, especially the young, was his true calling.

“Please, you have to help me,” the frightened, almost hysterical caller had said. “I can’t come to you. You have to meet me. It’s the only way. If you don’t, I’ll kill myself. I swear I will.”

His better judgment warned him against meeting his caller at a public park in Dunmore this evening, but his heart insisted that he must do whatever was necessary to save a life. The wisest course of action would be to tell Father Francis, but he knew that the parish priest would advise him against going, perhaps even forbid him to go. It wasn’t that Father Francis wasn’t a good and caring man. He was. But he was a priest who followed the rules, who adhered to the letter of the law, so to speak.

During his brief conversation with the caller, he had done his best to persuade the woman—or was she actually a teenaged girl or boy?—to come here to the church. But no matter how sincerely he had promised protection and anonymity, she had refused. The voice over the phone had been oddly hoarse, as if the person was trying to disguise it, but he believed the caller had been female. If a male, then his voice was alto in tone.

“No one must ever know,” she had said. “If he ever found out…” She had burst into tears.

“Everything will be all right. I promise that I will meet you this evening at eleven. And I will do what I can to help you.”

Father Brian had no idea who the mysterious he the caller had referred to was, but it had been apparent that she was terrified of this person. Her father? A male relative? A boyfriend? Whoever he was, he frightened her and had tormented her to the point that she was seriously contemplating suicide.

He, too, had once known that abject feeling of utter hopelessness. The night Father James had found him huddled in a corner of the church in Louisville, his body bloody and bruised and his spirit broken, he had been thinking about killing himself. He had been fifteen years old.

Father Brian dropped to his knees on the floor of his sitting room, folded his hands together and prayed. A prayer of heartfelt thanks for Father James, gone now these past ten years. And he prayed for the life of the person who had called, pleading with him for help. He needed God’s guidance. No matter what was going on in her life, no matter how horrible her situation, he must find a way to help her without betraying her trust. But he knew that if she was being beaten or molested, he would have to find a way to convince her to allow him to contact the authorities.

Erin McKinley reapplied her lip gloss and blush before leaving the restroom located across from Reverend Harper’s office in the basement of the First Baptist Church. It was already after six, half an hour past time for her eight-hour day to end, but as she did every day, she would knock on John Earl’s door and say good-bye before heading home. Each day she hoped that he would notice her, would see her as a woman and not just a fixture in his office. She had been his secretary for four years and had fallen in love with him almost immediately. She simply couldn’t help herself. Who wouldn’t love John Earl? Not only was he incredibly handsome, with thick, curly brown hair streaked with thin silver strands, stormy gray eyes and a tall, athletic body, but he was a truly good man. He lived his religion every day of his life. He was kind, considerate, patient and gentle. And Erin worshipped the ground he walked on. Yes, she knew it was a sin to lust after a married man, to dream of taking him to her bed and allowing him to ravish her. But she could no more stop herself from loving John Earl than she could stop the sun from rising in the east tomorrow morning.

She squared her shoulders, thrust her breasts forward, marched through the reception area and knocked before opening the door to John Earl’s office. She gasped softly when she saw that the reverend was not alone. He held his wife in his arms.

Ruth Ann Harper tilted her head and smiled at Erin. “Please, come in. I just came by to pick up John Earl. He and I have a date for a movie and dinner out this evening.”

He kissed his wife’s cheek with great affection.

Erin stiffened, but managed to force a friendly smile. She didn’t actually hate Ruth Ann. The woman was nice enough, and she did seem to truly love John Earl. But not as much as I love him.

Erin envied Ruth Ann, and in darker moments, when hopelessness and despair took over, she even thought about killing her. Not that she ever would, of course. But how could she ever compete with a woman such as Mrs. Harper, who seemed so perfect, always smiling and friendly, always perfectly groomed with nary a dark hair out of place? A fine wife, a good mother, a real lady. Tall, slender and elegant in that Jackie Kennedy/Grace Kelly kind of way, as if she had been born knowing all the correct things to say and do.

Not for the first time, Erin wondered what the oh-so-perfect Ruth Ann was like in bed. Was she as perfect at fucking as she seemed to be at everything else? Or was she, as Erin suspected, a frigid ice queen? After all, the woman had to have some faults, didn’t she? And if her shortcomings were inadequacies in the bedroom, that meant that Erin had a shot at giving John Earl something his wife could not. Other than being a damn good secretary, Erin was a damn good lay.

“It’s good to see you, Mrs. Harper,” Erin said. “I just wanted to say good-bye to Reverend Harper.” She looked directly at him, doing her best to hide the longing in her eyes.

“Good-bye, Erin. See you tomorrow,” John Earl replied, but he never took his eyes off his wife. Having dismissed his secretary, he said to Ruth Ann, “Do the girls have plans tonight or are they staying in with your mother?”

Just as Erin started to close the door, she heard Ruth Ann say, “The girls have plans. Felicity is going to the mall with some of her girlfriends, and Charity is going to the library.”

“Charity spends too much time in the library,” John Earl said. “She needs to have a little fun.”

“Are you saying our eighteen-year-old daughter needs a boyfriend?”

John Earl chuckled. “That’s a father’s worst nightmare—his baby girl dating. But yes, it’s time Charity started dating. Some nice young man who attends church here, a boy whose parents we know.”

Erin closed the door quietly and walked away, tears trickling down her cheeks. John Earl was a man devoted to his wife and daughters. If she hadn’t been able to seduce him in four years, what made her think she ever could? And with no hope of John Earl ever returning her love, her life simply wasn’t worth living.

“You knew that Jackson Perdue was back in Dunmore and you didn’t bother to tell me!” Cathy stood in the middle of the kitchen, hands on hips, and glared at her best friend.

“I didn’t mention it because I thought you needed time to adjust to being back home and settling into your new place next week and…” Lorie threw her hands in the air in a gesture that was half plea and half exasperation. “I thought I was protecting you. After all, you’ve got enough on your plate without having to deal with Jack Perdue showing up in Dunmore after all these years.” Lorie reached out and grabbed both of Cathy’s hands. “I swear to you that when Ruth Ann told me some man had called and wanted to hire Treasures as decorating consultants, I had no idea it was Jack.”

“I believe you.” Cathy squeezed Lorie’s hands, then pulled free and turned back to the stove, where she had several pots and pans bubbling, boiling and simmering. She was making Seth’s favorite meal: meatloaf, green peas, creamed potatoes, deviled eggs, biscuits and caramel pie for dessert. This morning, she had prepared the pie and placed it in the refrigerator and had made the meatloaf that was now warming in the oven. And only a few minutes ago, right before Lorie arrived home from Fayetteville, Cathy had topped the pie with whipped cream and Maraschino cherries.

Lorie came up behind Cathy and placed her hand on Cathy’s shoulder. “How was it, seeing him again?”

Cathy lifted the lid off the green peas, stirred them, turned the stove down low and replaced the lid. “I’m not sure. At first, I was nervous. Seeing him was such a shock.”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. If I’d had any idea this would happen, I’d have told you he was back in town.”

Cathy checked on the bubbling pot of sliced potatoes, then faced her friend. “He’s staying permanently. He’s moved into his mother’s house. He’s going to restore the old place, and he offered me the job as his design consultant.” Cathy giggled nervously. “Never in a million years would I have thought that someday Jack and I would…” Realizing she was on the verge of crying, she took several deep, calming breaths. “He’s different. And not just because he’s older and was injured in the war. He used to be so angry and tense all the time, but now he seems…I’m not sure—not so angry. Steadier somehow.”

“Did he tell you that he’s taken a job as one of Mike’s deputies?” Lorie asked.

Cathy nodded. “He was wearing his uniform and drove up in a county sheriff ’s car.”

“Is he still as handsome as sin?”

“Yes.”

“Any old feelings resurface?”

“A few.”

“Well, listen to you, being honest with yourself and with me.”

“I don’t lie to myself anymore.” Cathy picked up two oven mitts from the counter, opened the oven door and checked on the warming meatloaf. “There’s nothing wrong with admitting that I’m still attracted to Jack. Most women probably are. He always did attract the opposite sex. Besides, he’s single and so am I.”

“Amen, sister.” Lorie patted her on the back.

“He told me that Mike has assigned him to work on two cold-case files for the sheriff ’s department, and one of those cases is Mark’s murder.”

“What?”

“He was entirely up front about it.” Cathy looked directly at Lorie. “He told me he was sorry about what had happened to my husband, and then he explained that he was going over the county’s cold-cases—the unsolved homicides—including Mark’s murder.”

“But why? What possible reason would Mike have to reopen Mark’s case?”

“He’s not reopening the case,” Cathy said. “Jack is studying the files, and he’s going to compare notes with the police in Athens, where Charles Randolph, the Lutheran minister, was killed last year in the same way Mark was.”

Lorie put her arm around Cathy’s shoulders. “Oh, honey, you shouldn’t have to deal with any of this. You shouldn’t have to go over all those bad memories about the day Mark died. And you certainly shouldn’t have to work with Jack Perdue. I’ll step in and handle the consulting job myself, and that way you won’t have to—”

“No, that won’t be necessary. I can work with Jack. I’m not running away from the past. I faced a great many hard truths while I was in therapy. I learned that I can’t change the past. I can’t bring Mark back any more than I could have saved him the day he died. And I can’t deny that a part of me still loves Jack Perdue and probably always will.”

“Oh, Cathy…Honey, no, no…”

“It’s all right, really it is. I have no illusions about Jack. But he’s not the same now, and neither am I. I’m not expecting happily ever after, not with Jack or any other man. Whatever does or doesn’t happen between us, I can handle it.”

“Can you?”

“Yes.”

“What about Seth?”

Cathy swallowed hard. “What about Seth?”

“How do you think Seth would react if he found out the man you were in love with before you married Mark has come back into your life?”

“There’s no reason for Seth to know about my past with Jack.”

“Oh, honey, you’re lying to yourself if you think the truth won’t come out eventually. If you get involved with Jack again, all your secret little birds will come home to roost.”

He moaned and groaned and trembled with his release. She lay beneath him silent and unmoving, hating him, wishing him dead. His heavy weight pinned her to the bed—her canopy bed with white, lace-trimmed linens—as he kissed her tenderly and whispered the same words he always said when he had finished with her.

“I love you, sweetheart.”

When he lifted himself up and off her, she turned over, grabbed the sheet and pulled it over her naked body as she curled into a ball. She didn’t watch him leave her room, but she heard the door close behind him. He would go to his bathroom, remove the condom he had worn and take a shower. Then he would go into his den and spend the rest of the evening in his disguise as a man of God.

Lying there, her tender young breasts bruised from his rough hands and her whole body throbbing with shame and anger, she wanted to cry. But she didn’t cry anymore. Tears were useless. She was trapped in a nightmare without end. The only way to escape would be to end her life. But she wasn’t that brave. Not yet.

She got out of bed, took a shower to wash off his smell, dressed hurriedly and sneaked out through her bedroom window, leaving it cracked open so she could come back in later. It was nearly eight-thirty and had gotten dark early this evening because of the rain clouds. Tonight, the sky had partially cleared, enough so that the three-quarter moon peeked through the threads of murky clouds. She could stay out as late as she wanted, go anywhere, do anything, as long as no one recognized her and reported back to her father. He wouldn’t check on her again tonight. Once he raped her, he didn’t bother her again. Not until the next time. During the day, their lives were hypocritically normal. They ate their meals together every morning and evening. He asked her about her homework, her teachers and her friends. He acted like any father might. He attended all her school functions, charmed her teachers and her friends, and had the whole world fooled. Everyone believed he was the ideal father. No one suspected what happened between them several nights each week in the privacy of her bedroom.

“This is our secret,” he had told her the first time he had raped her, when she was thirteen. “No one else must ever know. No one would understand.”

He was right. No one would understand.

She didn’t understand.

“Mom, I think it’s great that you’ve rented your own place.” Seth finished off the last bite of caramel pie and scooted his chair away from the kitchen table.

“It’s not as large as our old house,” Cathy told him. “But it’s only three blocks from Nana and Granddad, over on Madison Avenue, and there’s plenty of room for the two of us. Your room is a really good size, and you’ll have your own bathroom.”

Seth’s smile, which she had enjoyed all evening, faded quickly at the mention of him living with her. “Mom, I…I…”

“You don’t have to move in with me next week when I take our furniture out of storage, but sooner or later, I want you to come home where you belong—with me.”

“I know what you want, Mom. It’s just that Granddad’s not going to agree, and I don’t think he’ll change his mind. You know how stubborn he is.”

“Yes, I know. And I would prefer to have your grandfather’s approval. But with or without it, I want you to live with me. You’re my son, not his. You belong with me.”

When she saw the confused expression on Seth’s face, she almost wished she could take back the adamant claim to her maternal rights. Almost. She would never make Seth do something he didn’t want to do, but she suspected that his reluctance to live with her had more to do with him not wanting to displease J.B. than it did with any doubts he had about moving in with her.

“Granddad and Nana are my legal guardians,” Seth reminded her. “When you went to Haven Home, you agreed that it was the best thing for me.”

“At the time, it was. But that was then and this is now. I’m completely well. I’m strong and healthy and totally competent.”

He stared at her, a look of uncertainty in his blue eyes.

Eyes identical to his father’s.

“I had a nervous breakdown. I chose to get the help I needed. I did that as much for you as for me. We had just lost Mark, lost your dad, and I knew you needed me. The only way I could be the mother you needed was to get well, completely well.”

“I know all that, but it doesn’t change the fact that you…Well, you totally lost it and spent a year in that place, and some people think you’re still…Gee, Mom, I don’t think you’re crazy or anything. It’s just that Granddad—”

“I understand.” Cathy steeled her nerves. Oh, she understood, all right. J.B. intended to retain legal custody of her son and would do whatever he thought necessary to keep a barrier between Seth and her. The old Cathy wouldn’t have fought back; she would have convinced herself that J.B. knew what was best. Well, that was the old Cathy. The new and improved Cathy would give her father-in-law the fight of his life. “But I’d still like for you to come by this weekend and see the house. And please, invite your grandparents to come with you.”

Seth’s face brightened. “Yeah, sure. That would be great. I know Granddad will eventually let me come over and spend the night.”

Cathy forced a smile and somehow managed to keep it in place for the next hour of Seth’s visit.

J.B. picked Seth up promptly at nine-thirty, but didn’t bother coming to the door. He honked the horn and waited outside. Seth kissed Cathy’s cheek and gave her a hug.

“Tonight was great,” he told her. “I’ll see you this weekend.”

She stood in the doorway and watched him get in the car with his grandfather. When J.B. glanced her way and nodded, she lifted her hand, waved and plastered an ear-to-ear grin across her face.

Just as the red taillights on J.B.’s Lincoln disappeared around the corner at the end of the block, Lorie came up beside Cathy.

“J.B.’s being a real bastard about Seth,” Lorie said.

“Yes, he is.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I’m going to call in the morning and make an appointment with Elliott Floyd. I believe it’s time I hired a lawyer.”

When Father Brian parked his Honda Civic, he noted that his was the only vehicle in the small paved lot adjacent to the park entrance. On several trips to Dunmore during the past couple of years, he had passed by Spring Creek Park, but he had never stopped and checked it out. The entrance was well lit, as the entire park seemed to be, with pole lights placed strategically throughout the acreage. After closing the car door, he took in a deep, steadying breath and instantly caught the scent of damp earth. He closed his eyes for a peaceful moment and inhaled that glorious smell left behind after a good, soaking rain.

He sighed, opened his eyes and checked his lighted digital wristwatch. Ten fifty-seven.

She should be here soon, if she showed up at all.

Please, God, let her come to me so that I can help her.

Although it was late May and the daytime temperatures ranged from the high seventies to the low eighties, the nights were still often quite chilly. Feeling the cool breeze whipping through the trees, he was glad he had worn his jacket.

The stone archway that led into the park appeared to be quite old. No doubt this park had been in existence for generations. Often parks were located near underground springs and other bodies of water, so he assumed Spring Creek Park was near Spring Creek. The sidewalk ended abruptly less than fifteen feet inside the park. Three dirt paths, leading in different directions, branched off from the sidewalk.

He paused, looked around, getting the lay of the land, so to speak, and felt an instant shiver of apprehension shoot through his body. Standing perfectly still, he listened to the quiet nighttime chorus of wind and nearby water and the gentle song of unseen creatures.

Suddenly the headlights of a passing car flashed across the park entrance and startled him. No reason to panic, he told himself. But what if the car had belonged to a policeman? What if he was questioned about what he was doing here, alone in the park, at this time of night? Why hadn’t he considered the possibility that someone might mistake him for one of those men who performed deviant sex acts in public places?

A flutter of noise erupted from a nearby tree, and two birds emerged from the thick foliage and sailed into the starless sky, their silhouettes spotlighted by the shadowed moonlight. The sound startled him, so much so that his heartbeat accelerated and his hands trembled. An anxious unease settled over him, accompanied by the thought that he shouldn’t be here.

He checked his watch again. Five after eleven. He would wait another ten minutes. Even though his gut instinct told him to leave now, his heartfelt concern for the person who had called him, begging for his help, overruled his common sense. Some poor, lost soul might take her own life tonight if he didn’t stay here and offer her hope for the future.

“Father Brian,” the voice called to him.

“Yes, I’m here.” His gaze circled the area around him, but he saw no one. “Where are you?”

Silence.

Had he imagined her calling his name? Had it simply been the wind?

“Please, show yourself. I’m Father Brian. I’m here to help you, my child.”

“Father Brian.” The eerily soft voice said his name again, and this time he noted from which direction it had come.

He followed the path that led past the small rose garden and two sets of concrete park benches. “Don’t be afraid.” He held out his hands in a gesture that he hoped indicated concern and caring. “Whatever is wrong in your life, God can help you. All things are possible through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.”

A dark figure bolted from the unlit area of trees and tall shrubs and came at him so quickly that he didn’t have time to react before he felt a cool, foul-smelling liquid splatter over him from his face to his feet.

What had just happened?

Father Brian looked into the face of death, realizing too late that he had walked into a skillfully planned trap. He saw the tiny, yellow-orange flame at the tip of the Pocket Torch lighter half a second before she tossed it on him, setting him on fire.

She moved back, away from the flames, and stood there listening to the priest’s screams. She watched in utter silence, smiling. He would never again harm another child.

Vengeance is mine, thus sayeth the Lord. She was the Lord’s instrument of punishment. He had chosen her to rid the world of men such as Father Brian. Slowly, quietly, as silent as the grave, she turned and walked away.

Burn in hell for your sins, Father Brian! Burn in everlasting torment.

Chapter Six

Tasha Phillips parked one of the two Spring Creek Missionary Baptist Church vans carrying the church’s preschoolers, and her husband, Dewan, pulled the second van up beside the first. Three SUVs followed, each carrying the same precious cargo. Every year on the final Tuesday prior to the Wednesday evening church services where the little ones participated in a graduation ceremony, the minister and his wife hosted a picnic at Spring Creek Park. As the director of the church’s preschool and day-care programs, Tasha took great pride in her accomplishments—not that they equaled Dewan’s, of course. Since they had come to Dunmore nearly ten years ago, the local church had flourished under her husband’s charismatic leadership. The once small, floundering congregation now boasted over two hundred members, a large number in a town of less than eight thousand residents, with only 10 percent of those African-American.

Mothers and fathers carrying picnic baskets and coolers emerged from their vehicles, and the teachers lined the preschoolers up and counted heads.

Once the group had congregated at the arched entrance to the park, Dewan raised his hands and called for a moment of silence. To a person, every man, woman and child quieted instantly. The murmur of the warm spring breeze and the trickle of springwater flowing over the nearby streambed provided background music for the prayer.

“Almighty God, creator of all things, benevolent and understanding, we come before You this morning asking for Your blessings for these our beloved children and thanking You for this fine day.”

Tasha bowed her head and closed her eyes as she listened to Dewan’s booming, authoritative voice speaking directly to the Lord. She was as mesmerized by him today as she had been twelve years ago when they had been introduced by mutual friends. For her, it had been love at first sight. She had never met anyone like Dewan Phillips, a man so sure of his calling to preach, a man who could have been anything he wanted and yet chose service to God and his fellow man. And when given the opportunity to be an assistant minister at a large church in Birmingham, he had chosen instead to accept the job as pastor of a needy church in the small North Alabama town of Dunmore.

At the end of Dewan’s prayer, a resounding shout of “Amen” signaled the children that they could laugh and talk, which they immediately did.

As the teachers and parents entered the park, Tasha slipped her arm through her husband’s and smiled up at him. At six-three, Dewan towered over her by a good ten inches. He leaned down, kissed her forehead and then laid his big hand tenderly over her slightly protruding belly. After ten years of marriage, ten years of praying for a child, they were, at long last, expecting a little boy in three months. They had already decided to name him after their fathers, Sidney Demetrius Phillips, but they couldn’t agree on what they would call him. She preferred Sid, after her dad, and he preferred Demetrius, after his dad. She suspected that, in the end, Dewan would win her over. He always did.

“You go on in,” he told her. “I need to get those folding chairs out of the back of the van.”

Tasha joined the others in the park, following the mothers as they walked directly toward the tables near the rose garden. There was more shade in that area because of the enormous old oak trees growing nearby. The teachers herded the children toward the play equipment suitable for their age groups while the parents busied themselves with picnic preparations. When Mariah Johnson pulled a red-checkered tablecloth from her basket and unfolded it, Tasha grabbed one end and helped her spread it across the nearest table.

“The day couldn’t be more perfect, could it?” Mariah said. “It’s as if the Lord is smiling down on us.”

While chitchatting happily, they retrieved another tablecloth from Mariah’s basket. Then, just as they lifted the cloth over the next table, a loud, terrified scream shattered the adults’ cheerful conversation and the children’s beautiful laughter. Tasha stopped dead still, the ends of the tablecloth clutched in her hands. Two of the fathers, Eli Richardson and Galvin Johnson, ran toward the screaming Monetia Simmons, who stood stiff as a granite statue, her wide eyes fixed on something lying on the ground behind the concrete tables at the far side of the rose garden. As the men neared Monetia, they paused when they saw what had made her scream.

Dewan came racing toward Tasha. “What’s wrong? I heard someone screaming.”

Eli went over to Monetia and put his arm protectively around her trembling shoulders while Galvin hurried toward Dewan. He said in a low, calm voice, “Call the police, Reverend Phillips. There’s a dead man over there. It looks like he burned to death.”

“Merciful Lord,” Tasha gasped.

Dewan gripped her arm. “You and the other ladies gather up the children and take them back to the church. I’ll contact the police, and the men and I will stay here until they arrive.”

Jack stared at the photographs of Mark Cantrell’s charred body. Autopsy photos. What kind of person could douse another human being with gasoline and set him on fire? Someone completely devoid of any type of normal emotions—someone incapable of empathy or sympathy?

His own body retained the scars left from an explosion, scars no surgeon’s scalpel could ever completely erase. But he had been in the middle of a war zone when he’d been severely injured. And he had survived. Casualties were expected during a war. Mark Cantrell had been living in a small, quiet Alabama town. He had been a minister, a man of God, someone who taught love and compassion and forgiveness. His death had been unexpected and horrific in nature.

What must it have been like for Cathy to have watched her husband burn to death, knowing there was absolutely nothing she could do to save him?

Jack set aside the Cantrell file and picked up the file containing the copies of the Athens police department’s report on the death of Charles Randolph. Six months after Mark Cantrell’s vicious murder, the forty-nine-year-old Randolph, a Lutheran pastor, had been covered with gasoline and set on fire. His wife had heard his screams and rushed into the backyard. She had found him burning to death in the alley, where he had gone to place their garbage for the next day’s trash pickup. Randolph had lived less than twelve hours after being rushed to the hospital. In his condition, he had been unable to tell the police anything. And neither his wife nor any of the neighbors had seen or heard anything suspicious.

Jack shoved aside the files, leaned back in the swivel chair at his desk, lifted his arms behind him and cupped the back of his head with his entwined fingers.

Other than the fact they were both clergymen, the two victims had nothing in common, nothing that would link them to each other or to the same killer.

These files told only part of the story, the official part, and that’s all that should concern him.

“Less than a week after Pastor Randolph’s murder, Cathy Cantrell had a nervous breakdown,” Mike had told him. “She spent several days in the hospital here in Dunmore, and then her mother drove her down to Birmingham, where Cathy checked herself into Haven Home, a mental-rehab center.”

Jack knew a little something about post-traumatic stress. During his recuperation from the bomb explosion, he’d gone through his own psychiatric treatment. And even now, there were times when he got the shakes and occasionally had nightmares. He hated to think about Cathy going through the torment of the damned.

Since seeing her yesterday afternoon, he had thought of little else. He was a damn fool. Whatever had been between Cathy and him had been over and done with long ago. When he’d been a kid of twenty, he had thought he was in love and had believed she felt the same. But shortly after his leave ended, his Rangers unit had been sent to the Middle East and he had wound up spending six months as a POW in Iraq before escaping.

And Cathy had married someone else.

A sharp knock on the door snapped Jack out of his musings about the past. Mike opened the door, stuck his head in and said, “I just got a call from Wade Ballard, Dunmore chief of police. A group from a local Baptist church went to Spring Creek Park this morning for a picnic and found a dead body. Looks like the victim burned to death.”

Jack shot up out of the chair. “Any idea who the victim is?”

“They found a car at the park they believe belonged to the victim. The church folks said the car was there when they arrived. Wade ran a check on the license plate. The car is registered to Brian Myers, a Catholic priest from Huntsville.”

“Son of a bitch,” Jack grumbled under his breath. “Victim number three.”

“Yeah, it could be. We’ll know more when the crimescene guys finish up and after we get a look at the autopsy results.”

Jack kept up with Mike’s hurried pace as they exited the sheriff ’s office complex and headed toward Mike’s heavyduty Ford pickup.

“There were six months between murders one and two. Why wait a whole year before striking again?” Jack might be jumping to conclusions, but his gut told him that whoever killed the priest was the same person who had murdered Charles Randolph and Mark Cantrell.

Someone was killing clergymen. What was their motive? And why had they chosen such a gruesome way to execute their victims?

Lorie gift wrapped the set of coasters and the matching placemats that Mrs. Webber had purchased for her grandniece’s bridal shower. She took extra care with this gift, choosing the most expensive paper and ribbon she kept on hand at Treasures. Margaret Webber was one of their best customers and one of the grand old dames of Dunmore society. If someone such as she could accept Lorie, even as a lowly peon, there was hope that someday a lot of other people in her hometown would also accept her. Maybe even Michael Birkett.

After placing a Treasures of the Past gold sticker on the gift, she inserted the beautifully wrapped box into one of their largest bags with handles and offered it to Mrs. Webber.

“Here you are,” Lorie said. “And please give my best wishes to your niece.”

“Thank you, my dear.”

“Have a nice day.”

“And you, too.”

Just as Mrs. Webber headed out the door, Lorie’s cell phone, which lay on the glass checkout counter, jingled. Before answering, she checked caller ID. She did a double take when she saw the name. What an odd coincidence. Michael Birkett. Her heart stopped. Why on earth would Mike be calling her?

With an unsteady hand, she picked up the phone. “Hello.”

“Lorie?”

She cleared her throat. “Yes, this is Lorie Hammonds.”

“Mike Birkett here. Is Cathy there with you?”

“She’s here, but she’s in the stockroom doing some endof-the-month inventory. Would you like to speak to her?” Why the hell hadn’t he called the store phone? Why her cell phone? And just how did he get her private number? He’s the sheriff, she reminded herself. He can get anybody’s number.

“No, I don’t want to speak to her. I called you directly because I didn’t want to risk Cathy answering the store phone. There’s no easy way to say this…” His voice trailed off as if he was having a difficult time with whatever news he had to share.

“You’re scaring me. Has something happened to Seth?”

“No, nothing like that,” Mike assured her.

“My God, whatever it is, just tell me.”

“There’s been another murder. The pastor, his wife and some members of the local black Baptist church found a body at Spring Creek Park this morning when they went there for a picnic.” Mike paused. “The victim burned to death. Andy Gamble says that it looks like he was drenched in gasoline. And one more thing—we’re pretty sure the guy was a Catholic priest from over in Huntsville.”

Sour bile rose up Lorie’s esophagus and burned her throat. “Damn! How can I tell Cathy about this? You know what happened when that Lutheran pastor over in Athens was killed last year.”

“You don’t have to tell her. I’ll do it. But word’s got out already, and I thought I should warn you before somebody comes into the shop and blurts it out.”

“Oh God, oh God.”

“Pull yourself together,” Mike told her. “Jack and I will be there in twenty minutes or less.”

“Jack? Why bring him?”

“Jack’s one of my deputies, and since I put him in charge of the department’s old cases, including Mark Cantrell’s murder, he’s been exchanging info with the detectives in Athens who headed up the Randolph murder. With this third murder, we’ll probably be calling in the Alabama Bureau of Investigation and forming a task force. I’ll be assigning Jack to work with the other law-enforcement agencies involved with this new murder investigation.”

“Cathy is going to have a hard enough time today hearing the news about another murder similar to Mark’s. She doesn’t need to have to deal with Jackson Perdue at the same time.”

“You’re overreacting, aren’t you? Jack and Cathy’s little romance lasted what? Two weeks? And that was nearly twenty years ago.”

“No, Cathy and Jack’s little romance wasn’t quite that long ago,” she said. “It ended about the same time ours did, right after I left Dunmore and went to LA.”

Silence. Mike didn’t make a sound.

Why on earth had she brought up their past history? Now was not the right time. Actually there probably never would be a right time.

“Sorry,” Lorie said. “We weren’t talking about us, were we? But then there is no us and there’ll never be an us, not ever again.”

“Do what you can to keep Cathy from finding out about the murder before I can talk to her.” Mike ignored her comment about the two of them. “And…uh, I won’t bring Jack with me.”

“Thanks. I’ll lock the front door and put up the CLOSED sign. When you get here, come to the back door.”

“All right.” He ended their conversation abruptly with those two words.

Mike had been right to ignore her outburst. It wasn’t as if she had any hope whatsoever that he would ever forgive her for what she’d done. Even if she would settle for the two of them being nothing more than friends, he wasn’t interested. He didn’t want to have anything to do with her, and he’d made that abundantly clear more than once in the years since she had returned to Dunmore, tail tucked between her legs and her reputation in tatters.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

You have to take care of Cathy and help her not to fall apart when she hears the news about the priest’s ghastly murder.

Lorie removed the keychain from the drawer beneath the counter, walked across the shop and locked the front door. After flipping the OPEN sign to where it read CLOSED, she went to the back storeroom, where Cathy stood at the top of a stepladder.

“Need some help?” Lorie asked.

Cathy glanced down at her. “Who’s looking after our customers?”

“Mrs. Webber just left, and the place is empty. You know that Tuesdays are never very busy. Besides, it’s nearly noon, and I thought we could go ahead and take our lunch break.”

Cathy stepped down off the ladder. “Since Tuesdays are slow days as a general rule, maybe we should think about doing something special to draw in customers every Tuesday. We could have a sale day on certain items or serve refreshments on Tuesdays or—”

“It all sounds great. We can discuss your ideas over lunch.” She draped her arm through Cathy’s. “Come on. You take those tuna-salad sandwiches you made this morning out of the refrigerator, put on a pot of fresh coffee and I’ll run back out front and get us a box of those sinfully rich McTavish shortbread cookies.”

Cathy eyed Lorie suspiciously. “Are you all right? You’re acting kind of funny.”

“I’m okay. Just hungry.” She gave Cathy a gentle shove toward the hallway that led from the stockroom to the kitchenette. “Feed me and I’ll be fine.”

Lorie hated being less than honest with Cathy, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell her about this new murder, another death so similar to Mark’s. Maybe Cathy was emotionally strong enough to hear the news and deal with it, but what if she wasn’t? What if she fell apart again?

It was best for Mike to tell her, just in case.

Mike parked his truck in the alley behind Treasures of the Past, but instead of getting out immediately, he killed the engine and sat there collecting his thoughts. He hadn’t dreaded anything this much in a long time. He had known Cathy since she was a kid. He’d grown up with her, gone to church where she went, lived on the same block. And he had been crazy in love with her best friend for as far back as he could remember. There hadn’t been anyone else for him except Lorie Hammonds, from elementary school through high school and his first two years at the junior college. He and Lorie had often double-dated with Cathy and whatever friend of his he could talk into taking Cathy out. It wasn’t that Cathy hadn’t been cute, but she’d been shy and bookish, and all the guys knew they wouldn’t get past first base with her.

And then Jack Perdue had noticed Cathy. He’d been home on leave from the army and visiting Mike and his family. From the minute Jack had asked Cathy for a date, the two had been inseparable for the remaining two weeks of Jack’s stay in Dunmore.

If he’d ever seen two people in love…

Mike didn’t know what had happened between them, why things hadn’t worked out. All he knew was that less than three months later, Cathy married Mark Cantrell, and shortly after that he’d accepted a preaching position at a church in another state. And that same year, Lorie had won a talent contest and flown off to Los Angeles to become a Hollywood star.

Mike slammed his fist down on the steering wheel.

It had taken him a long time to stop loving Lorie, but eventually he’d met someone else, a sweet girl named Molly. They’d had six great years and two fabulous kids together before he’d lost her. When Lorie had finally come back to Dunmore, he’d been too busy caring for his dying wife and his two small children to take much notice.

The sound of a car horn coming from the nearby street jerked Mike out of his memories and reminded him of where he was and why he was here.

Stop putting things off. Go do what you have to do.

He got out of the truck, walked over to the back door of Treasures and knocked. Ordering Jack to stay at the scene of the crime had been the only way to keep him from coming along.

“I need you here at the park,” Mike had told him. “I’m making you the liaison between the sheriff ’s department and the police department on this murder case. If you want to help Cathy, then do your job and help us find the killer.”

Jack hadn’t put up an argument. Instead he had said, “Yeah, sure. There’s no reason for me to go with you. There’s nothing I can do for her.”

Mike hated to admit that Lorie had been right—Cathy didn’t need to deal with Jack, not right now. He hadn’t wanted to believe that there might still be some unresolved feelings between Cathy and Jack, because if he did, he’d have to face the fact that he still had some unresolved feelings for Lorie.

When no one came to the back door, he knocked again, louder and harder.

“Coming,” Lorie called.

He took a deep breath.

Lorie opened the door and looked up at him with those big brown eyes that had haunted his dreams for years. “She’s in the kitchenette. I got her to eat a bite, because I figured once she hears the news, she’ll lose her appetite.”

When Lorie moved aside, allowing him to enter, he asked, “Have you said anything to her?”

Lorie shook her head. “No, but I’ve been so jittery that I think she knows something’s up. She’s asked me a couple of times if I’m all right.”

“How is she? I mean really, how is she? Can she take this news without cracking up?”

“She’s been doing better than fine since she came home. She smiles and laughs, and she’s been holding her own against Elaine and the Cantrells. She’s the same wonderful Cathy she always was, only better. She’s stronger and more self-confident.”

“So you think she’ll handle this okay, then?”

“God, I hope so.”

“I thought you said—”

“This news will force her to relive the day Mark died. I don’t know how she’ll cope with that. I think she’ll do okay, but…Damn, bad things just shouldn’t happen to good people like Cathy.”

“Bad things happen to good people all the time.” Molly had been one of the finest women he’d ever known, and yet she had suffered unbearably for the last year of her life.

Cathy came out of the kitchenette. “Hey, is that you, Mike?”

“Yeah, it’s me.” He moved past Lorie and went straight to Cathy.

Lorie came up beside him. Cathy looked from one to the other.

“What’s wrong? What’s happened? It’s not Seth…?”

“Seth is fine,” Lorie and Mike said in unison.

“Then what is it?”

“Why don’t we go sit down,” Mike suggested.

Cathy shook her head. “No. Whatever it is, tell me now.”

Mike sucked in air and blew out a frustrated breath. “We’ve had a homicide in Dunmore. Andy—you know Andy Gamble is the county coroner now—anyway, Andy thinks the man was killed sometime last night.”

Cathy stared at him, her blue-green eyes wide and her lips slightly parted. Lorie grabbed Cathy’s arm.

“How was this man killed?” Cathy asked.

Mike grimaced. “It looks like he was set on fire.”

Cathy staggered. Lorie tightened her grip and held fast.

“I wanted to tell you before you heard it from somebody else,” Mike said. “We don’t have an official ID yet, but we believe the victim was Father Brian Myers, a Catholic priest from Huntsville.”

“Another clergyman was set on fire.” Cathy reached out and clasped Lorie’s hand. “It’s the same person who killed Mark and Reverend Randolph, isn’t it?”

“We aren’t sure, but yeah, we think maybe it is.”

Chapter Seven

Jack stood off to the side talking to Chief Ballard while Andy Gamble’s two-person crew carried the body bag out of the park. Jack had gone to school with the lanky, red-headed Andy, who’d been a senior when Jack was a freshman. Burly, bald Wade Ballard was ten years older than Jack, but everybody in Dunmore knew he’d been the local high school baseball star who had gone on to play for the Atlanta Braves for five years until a car wreck had messed up his pitching arm.

The crime scene had been effectively closed off by a ring of tape, but the entire park was temporarily off-limits to all except authorized personnel. A single entry and exit route had been marked off in order to manage the number of people who had access to the scene.

“The ABI guys are on their way,” Wade said. “Mike and I agree that it looks like we just might have ourselves a serial killer, considering this was the third preacher set on fire in the past eighteen months.”

“Technically, this is your case since the park is in the city limits,” Jack said. “But with this crime possibly connected to the Mark Cantrell case, we would appreciate your allowing us to join forces with your team.”

“I figure I need all the help I can get. I put in a call to Chief O’Dell over in Athens, where that other preacher was killed last year.” Scowling, Wade threw up his hand and hollered, “Where the hell did that dog come from? Get him out of here. I want this crime scene as pristine as possible for the state boys.”

While two uniformed policemen chased off the stray dog, Wade grumbled under his breath. Heaving a deep sigh that expanded his massive chest and beer belly, he turned back to Jack. “Reverend Phillips swore that no one in his party got anywhere near the body, but Lord only knows how they might have accidentally contaminated the site.”

“I’d say other than finding an eyewitness to the crime, which is highly unlikely, the most important thing is to get the answers to a few questions. Did the victim die from his burns? Was he doused with gasoline? And can we, with some degree of certainty, connect this crime to the deaths of Mark Cantrell and Charles Randolph?”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Wade nodded, then settled his gaze directly on Jack’s face. “Tell me something. What kind of person would do something like this?”

“I’m far from an expert, but my guess would be that it’s someone who hates clergymen.”

Wade grunted. “Yeah, but why burn them to death? Why not just shoot ’em?”

“Figuring that out is probably a job for a professional profiler,” Jack said.

“Well, we sure don’t have one of them on our payroll, and I don’t know if the ABI boys have got one, either.”

“I think I might know someone who can pull a few strings and get us a former FBI profiler.”

Wade’s beady brown eyes widened with interest. “Tell me more.”

But before Jack could respond, he caught a glimpse of the coroner meandering toward them, seemingly in no hurry. Andy’s long legs created a slow, easy stride. “Hell of a thing to see, a man burned like that,” Andy said as he paused alongside Jack. “It’s enough to give a person nightmares.”

Jack understood only too well how the sight of something so atrocious could embed itself in a guy’s mind and haunt him for years. Even the most seasoned soldier never became completely immune.

“Any preliminary findings you’d like to share?” Wade asked.

Andy shrugged. “I’d say our victim was doused with gasoline, but the lab folks will make a definite determination. I’ll make sure any pieces of clothing that didn’t burn up are stored in an oven bag.”

“Oven bag?” Jack asked.

“Yeah. An oven bag is a polyinylidene bag used for the proper storage of volatile accelerants, especially those that evaporate easily,” Andy explained.

Wade rubbed his meaty fingers across the back of his thick neck. “Can you say for certain that he wasn’t killed first and then set on fire?”

“I can’t say anything for certain officially, not yet, but from my routine exam here at the scene, I’d say he died from his burns. The burns covering the body had inflamed edges where the red blood cells worked to fix the damage.”

“How soon will you be able to give us a positive ID?” Wade asked.

“Depends on how soon we can get hold of Father Brian’s dental records,” Andy said. “That will be the quickest way to ID him, assuming the car that y’all found belonged to our dead guy.”

“We’re ninety percent sure,” Jack said. “Father Brian is missing. No one has seen him since late yesterday evening.”

“Jack here thinks he can get us a professional profiler to compare the three murders.” Grinning, Wade clamped his hand over Jack’s shoulder. “Of course, the city can’t afford any kind of big fee.”

“How about for free?” Jack looked at Andy. “You remember my kid sister, Maleah? She works for the Powell Agency, and they keep a profiler on retainer.”

“Yeah, I remember Maleah,” Andy said. “Do you think she can pull a few strings with her boss and get this guy involved?”

“Maybe,” Jack replied.

“It would sure help if we had some idea what kind of person is doing the killing, assuming all three murders were committed by the same perpetrator,” Wade said.

“Whoever the hell he is, he’s one sick puppy.” Andy glanced at the area near the rose garden—the scene of the crime.

Maleah could barely keep up with Nic as they jogged along the dirt trail by the lake. The problems between Nic and Griff were still unresolved. She had suspected as much the minute Nic called her last night and asked her to come to Griffin’s Rest, not on an assignment but as a friend.

“You’ll be on the payroll,” she had assured Maleah. “But without someone other than Barbara Jean to talk to, I’m going to wind up doing something stupid.” Barbara Jean, the wheelchair-bound girlfriend of Griff ’s best friend and right-hand man, Sanders, worked full time at Griffin’s Rest. Since Nic’s marriage to Griff, the two women had become close friends.

“Barbara Jean advises me to be patient and understanding with Griff and accept the situation with Yvette,” Nic had said last night. “She doesn’t question Sanders’s past or present friendship with Yvette. But that’s the way she handles things. I can’t do it her way. I’m on the verge of exploding.”

“I’ll be there first thing in the morning,” Maleah had promised.

She had left her Knoxville apartment at five this morning and arrived in time for breakfast with Nic and Griff. It had taken her less than five minutes to ascertain the situation between her boss and his wife had gotten worse. They had each carried on a conversation with her, but hadn’t said two words to each other. And when Griff left for a business trip, he’d kissed Nic on the cheek. That was a sure sign of trouble in paradise.

So here Nic and she were this afternoon, running like madwomen for the second time today. She hated to tell Nic that all this physical activity wasn’t a cure-all for her troubles.

“Good grief, hold up, will you?” Maleah called to Nic, who was at least fifteen feet ahead of her.

Nic slowed her pace, then stopped and turned around to face Maleah. Perspiration dotted her face and soaked her white T-shirt and gray cotton shorts. “What’s wrong?” She inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. “Have you got a cramp?”

“No cramp.” Maleah gasped the reply, then leaned over and sucked in large gulps of air. “Let’s sit down and talk. I’m worn to a frazzle.”

“We’ve been talking, but it hasn’t helped much. I’m still pissed as hell.”

Pulling herself up straight, Maleah walked over, lifted her arm and put it around Nic’s shoulders.

“Let’s sit down over there by the lake. If you don’t want to talk, we won’t, but I’m exhausted. I can’t run another twenty feet, let alone another mile.”

“Okay.” Nic offered Maleah a halfhearted smile. “Sorry that I’ve been putting you through this marathon. It’s either this or pack my bags and leave again.”

“What’s leaving going to solve?”

“I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.”

Nic followed Maleah to the edge of the lake, where they found a grassy spot to sit. Nic bent her knees, circled them with her arms and pulled her legs toward her body.

Maleah removed her running shoes and thick cotton socks, then immersed her feet in the cool lake water. “Are we talking or sitting quietly?”

“What is there left to say? I’ve talked your ear off today. I’ve ranted and raved and gone over the same crap time and again.” Nic laughed, the sound hollow and unhappy. “I feel as if I’m spinning my wheels and going nowhere.”

“Haven’t you talked to Griff and told him what’s going on with you?”

“I’ve tried several times this past week to have a conversation with him about how I feel, and his solution is to drag me off to bed and screw me.”

Maleah grinned.

“Don’t you dare laugh,” Nic said. “It’s not the least bit funny.”

“Sorry. I was just thinking how many women would love to have Griffin Powell drag them off to bed and screw them.”

Nic buried her face in her hands.

Maleah patted her back. “I really am sorry. I shouldn’t make light of your problems. I understand. I wouldn’t be happy if I felt as if I were sharing my man with another woman. If I had a man, which I don’t have and do not want.”

“I know Griff loves me, and sex has never been the problem. My insecurities and Griff ’s unwillingness to share the whole truth about his past are the problems. And that past includes Yvette and Sanders.”

“If trying to talk to Griff doesn’t work, talk to Yvette,” Maleah suggested.

Nic snapped around and glared at Maleah. “And just what do I say to her? Do I ask her why there’s so much secrecy surrounding this project Griff is helping her with? Or do I ask her why she and Griff haven’t been totally honest with me about their past relationship?”

“Ask her about both. Be honest with her, and maybe she’ll be honest with you. Tell her that Griff ’s involvement with her sanctuary for her psychic students is creating tension in your relationship with your husband. From what you’ve told me about Yvette, and from what I’ve learned firsthand, I get the feeling that the last thing she’d ever want to do is cause a rift between you and Griff.”

“I know you’re right about that, but at the same time, I’m not sure she’d tell me anything if I asked her,” Nic said.

“You won’t know until you ask.”

“You’re right. And there’s no better time than now, since Griff will be gone to Switzerland for a few days, tending to some financial matters. Or at least that’s what he told me.”

Nic crossed her arms over her chest in a hugging motion. It must be terrible to feel as if you can’t completely trust the man you love, Maleah thought. She knew Griff as her boss, and as her friend’s husband. While working for him, she had come to realize that Griffin Powell was a very complicated man. But on that score, Nic and Griff were a good match. Nic was rather complex herself.

While Maleah considered what else to say about Nic confronting Dr. Yvette Meng with questions that Griff seemed reluctant to answer, her phone rang. Her ringtone was the theme song from the old Peter Gunn TV series.

She unhooked the phone from where she’d clipped it to the elastic waist of her running shorts and checked the caller ID “Jack, can I call you back later?”

“Sure. When?” he asked.

Nic clasped Maleah’s arm. “No, go ahead and talk to your brother. I’ll head back to the house. After I grab a shower and change clothes, I plan to go see Yvette.”

“Okay.” She gave her friend a reassuring smile. “Afterward, if you want to talk, just knock on my door.”

“Sure thing.” Nic surged to her feet and jogged back toward the house.

Maleah returned to her call. “Okay, I can talk now. What’s up? Things going okay with your job? And how are your plans going for renovations to the old home place?”

“The job’s fine,” Jack told her. “As for the house—I’ve got a couple of contractors coming by later this week to give me estimates on what it’ll cost to put the old beauty in tiptop shape.”

“So, did you call for a specific reason or just to…?”

“I need a favor.”

“Sure. Just ask.” She adored her big brother, always had and always would. In her eyes, he could do no wrong. For as long as she lived, she would owe him more than she could ever repay for protecting her as best he could from their stepfather, that sadistic son of a bitch.

“There’s a chance we’ve got a serial killer on the loose here in northern Alabama. There have been three almost identical murders in the past eighteen months. It would help us if we could get a profile done of the possible killer. Any chance you could help us out?”

Maleah groaned inwardly. Yes, she could help them, and she would. But damn it all, she really hated the thought of asking Derek Lawrence for a favor. From the instant they met, he had rubbed her the wrong way. He was just a little too good-looking and a little too suave and sophisticated for her tastes. And the man was a damn know-it-all. Yes, he was brilliant, with an IQ bordering on genius. And from what Nic had told her, he had come from old money, thus explaining his attitude of superiority, although rumor was that the family had lost most of their vast fortune. Some bad investments and several hefty divorce settlements made by his father and uncle.

“I’ll get in touch with Derek Lawrence tonight,” Maleah said. “Derek doesn’t come cheap, but the Powell Agency has him on retainer, and the agency often provides his services without charge. All I’ll need to do is get Nic to sign off on it, and I know she will.”

“Thanks, Sis. I appreciate it.”

“I take it that this case is connected to one of your cold-case files?”

“Yeah.”

“Which one?”

“The minister who was doused with gasoline and set on fire.”

“Oh.”

“Oh, what?”

“Nothing,” Maleah said. “It’s just that I know that minister was Cathy Nelson’s husband and—”

“Cathy has nothing to do with this.”

“Don’t give me that. I remember the summer you came home on leave and stayed with Mike and his family. I might have been only fifteen, but I was old enough to know what was going on between you and Cathy.” Maleah paused and considered what she was going to say next. “And I remember later on how you reacted when you found out that she’d married Mark Cantrell.”

“Past history,” Jack said.

“She’s a widow now.”

“Yeah, so she is.” He paused briefly before changing the subject. “So, let me know if you can line up that profiler. If you can, I’ll fax him all the info we have.”

“I’ll call you as soon as I know something for sure.”

“Thanks. I appreciate your doing this.”

“No problem.”

“ ’Bye.”

“Take care of yourself, okay?”

“Sure thing.”

“ ’Bye.”

Maleah clipped her phone back on to the waistband of her shorts but didn’t get up immediately. She could postpone getting in touch with Derek. She could go back to the house, shower and eat dinner first. But delaying the inevitable wasn’t her style. Just do it and get it over with was her motto.

She pulled on her socks, put on her shoes and tied them. After standing up and stretching, she looked out over the lake. She loved staying at Griffin’s Rest, loved the acres and acres of woods, the dirt pathways that meandered here and there, the lake itself and the solitude she found here.

She retrieved her phone, hit the preprogrammed number and waited for Derek to answer. But instead of speaking to the arrogant man himself, she got his voice mail. Breathing a sigh of relief, she left a message, succinctly explaining what she needed from him and giving him Jack’s phone number. If she were lucky, she wouldn’t have to deal with Derek directly.

After Mike had delivered the news about the latest victim, Lorie had closed Treasures for the day. They had come home nearly an hour ago. Cathy’s mother had arrived first, and she’d been in the middle of reassuring her mom that she was perfectly all right when J.B. and Mona arrived on Lorie’s doorstep.

Sensing that everyone, with the possible exception of Lorie, expected her to come unglued at any moment, Cathy felt she needed to say something that would ease their fears. After all, it wasn’t unreasonable for them to expect the worst. A year ago, she had proven just how emotionally unstable she’d been.

While Lorie excused herself and went into the kitchen to prepare iced tea for their guests, Cathy cleared her throat loudly. All eyes focused on her.

“I know y’all are worried about me and you’ve rushed over here because you’re concerned.” She took a deep, calming breath. “I appreciate that, but I promise you that I’m fine. I’m not going to have another breakdown. Not today or tomorrow or ever again.”

“I know you believe that, but this was such a horrible shock,” Elaine said. “Not just for you, but for all of us. To think that the person who killed our dear Mark has killed again…” With tears misting her eyes, she covered her mouth with her open hand and bowed her head.

Mona reached out and clasped Cathy’s hands. “We’re here because we love you. We care. If there’s anything we can do…We should have been there for you the last time. If only we’d known how fragile you were.”

Cathy hugged her mother-in-law, then pulled away and told her, “There’s nothing you could have done. I think my breakdown was inevitable. But I’m completely well now. I’m much stronger, and I can deal with whatever happens.”

“It’s good that you feel you can handle this,” J.B. said, his voice deceptively kind and soothing. “And naturally if there’s anything we can do to help you, we will. But all things considered, I feel it’s best that we cancel Seth’s visits with you…for the time being. Just until we’re sure you’ll be all right.”

Damn him! If he thought he was going to use this as an excuse to keep her son away from her, then he’d better think again. She, not J.B. or anyone else, would decide what was best for Seth.

Cathy all but shoved Mona aside as she marched up to J.B. and glowered at him.

“You must understand that J.B is doing what he thinks is best for you and for Seth,” Mona said pleadingly, apparently afraid of a confrontation between her husband and daughter-in-law.

“Of course she understands.” Elaine glanced back and forth between Cathy and J.B. “Don’t you, dear? J.B. is doing what he knows is best for Seth. That’s what you want, what we all want.” When Cathy didn’t respond, her mother added, “Please tell J.B. and Mona that you agree with their decision, that Seth’s welfare is what’s most important.”

Cathy’s gaze never wavered. She kept it focused directly on her father-in-law. “Of course Seth’s welfare is what’s most important.” Both Elaine and Mona sighed with relief. “But as Seth’s mother, I believe I should be the one to make the decisions concerning Seth, not you, J.B.”

Pulsating with a nervous silence, the room became deadly quiet.

“You’re not in any condition to make decisions for my grandson.” J.B.’s tone had changed to an icy control. “You haven’t been out of that mental institution for two full weeks yet.”

Cathy squared her shoulders and stiffened her spine. There had been a time when she never would have stood up to her father-in-law, but those days were over. He was wrong about her. And she would prove it to him and to anyone else who had doubts about her mental stability.

“I’m not going to argue with you,” she told him. “Not now. But I think you should know—”

“Tea, anyone?” Lorie came into the room carrying a tray of tall, chilled glasses.

And then the doorbell rang.

Lorie handed Cathy the tray, leaned in and whispered, “Keep your cool. Now is not the time or place to do battle with the old buzzard.” Then she went straight into the foyer and opened the front door.

The tension that had been vibrating like a live wire dissipated somewhat as they all turned to see who Lorie had invited into her home. As Lorie escorted the man into the living room, J.B. came forward immediately and held out his hand.

“It’s good of you to come, Brother Hovater.” J.B. shook hands with him, and Mona rushed over and gave him a hug.

While Elaine joined the others in welcoming the newcomer, Lorie subtly eased toward Cathy until she was close enough to say in a soft, low voice, “Looks like your father-in-law called in reinforcements.”

Cathy had met Brother Donnie Hovater, the minister who had been hired as Mark’s permanent replacement, this past Sunday morning when she had attended church services. Her mother had informed her that he’d been in Dunmore for nearly ten months now, he was a widower and his teenage daughter went to school with Seth. Her mother had also informed her that all the single ladies in town considered him quite a catch.

Cathy studied the young and attractive minister. He was no older than Mark had been, perhaps even a few years younger, and he actually reminded her of her late husband. Broad-shouldered and slender, he looked neat as a pin in his tan slacks and navy, short-sleeved shirt.

When Brother Hovater approached her, his hand out, ready to take hers, she hesitated. Don’t be paranoid. Don’t assume they’re all ganging up on you. They’re not. Everyone here, including J.B., is concerned about you.

“I hope you don’t mind my barging in this way,” he said. “But your father-in-law thought perhaps I could help.”

She shook hands with the minister. “In what way did J.B. think you could help?”

He seemed surprised by her question, but after a moment’s uncertainty, he smiled. “The unfortunate murder that occurred last night in the park has stirred up unpleasant memories for J.B. and Mona, and for you, too, I’m sure. I’m here as your minister and a friend of the family to offer whatever support and advice you might need.”

Cathy stared into his eyes, trying to decide just how sincere he was. She had no reason to doubt him, of course. He was probably a good man who had the best intentions, but the fact that he seemed so chummy with J.B. bothered her. It shouldn’t. After all, J.B. was an elder in the church, and it was only natural that he and the new minister would be on friendly terms.

“That’s very kind of you,” Cathy said. “I appreciate everyone’s concern. I’m sure my father-in-law filled you in on the details of how I reacted the last time a clergyman was brutally murdered in the same fashion my husband was.” She paused to take a breath, and then continued before the preacher could respond. “I can assure you that I’m not on the verge of another nervous breakdown.”

“I apologize if I gave you the impression that I came here because I or your in-laws question your mental health,” Brother Hovater told her, sympathy evident in his hazel eyes. “I’m here for no other reason than to be of service to you, if you need me.”

“Thank you. But what I need right now is to be left alone to deal with my memories and my feelings. I am not an emotional cripple. And what would help me tremendously is if my mother and my in-laws could get it through their heads that I’m not crazy.” Cathy turned and ran out of the living room, knowing her actions would be misconstrued as evidence she was indeed crazy.

She hurried into the kitchen, taking the quickest and easiest escape route out the back door and onto the side yard that separated Lorie’s house from her nearest neighbor’s. Seeking sanctuary under the sheltering weeping willow, Cathy braced her open palms against the tree trunk, tilted her chin down and closed her eyes.

You overreacted, and you know it. You did just what Lorie told you not to do. You lost your cool. You lashed out from sheer frustration.

What would Dr. Milton say?

Cathy smiled.

Give yourself permission to be human, to make mistakes. Having a hissy fit occasionally can be good for you. Don’t bottle up all your emotions.

“Catherine!” Elaine stomped off the back porch and marched toward Cathy, a stern, disapproving expression on her face.

Oh God, just what she didn’t need—her mother reading her the riot act.

She lifted her head, tilted her chin up and squared her shoulders, preparing for battle. It seemed to her that most of the conversations she’d had with her mother from the time she was a little girl had been a battle of wills, battles her mother always won.

Coming up to Cathy there beneath the willow tree, Elaine glared at her. “If you wanted to convince everyone that you’re still emotionally unstable, that little scene back there proved it. Your rudeness to Brother Hovater was uncalled for. And how dare you treat J.B. in such a disrespectful manner. I raised you better than that, or at least I thought I did. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in you, young lady. You should go back inside right this minute and apologize to everyone.”

“No,” Cathy said.

“What do you mean no?” Elaine stared at her in disbelief.

“I regret that I was rude to Brother Hovater, and I will probably apologize to him, but not this evening. Later. Perhaps at tomorrow evening’s prayer meeting. But as for J.B.—it will be a cold day in hell before I apologize to that man ever again.”

Elaine gasped.

“And another thing, Mother, I don’t give a rat’s ass how disappointed you are in me. Your opinion of me no longer matters.”

Cathy walked off, leaving her stunned mother standing alone in the side yard.

God, she felt good!

Chapter Eight

Cathy couldn’t ever remember feeling so damn good about doing something so bad. She had talked back to her mother, no doubt a sin that would condemn her to eternal hellfire. And she didn’t care. She had done what she had once believed would be impossible—she had stood up to her mother and survived. Not only had she survived, but she had been set free from a lifetime of knowing she would never live up to Elaine Nelson’s expectations.

As she strolled down the sidewalk at a leisurely pace, her mind savoring the preceding moments of personal glory, she didn’t pay any attention to the passing vehicles on the street.

“Running away from home?” a voice called out to her.

As she stopped and turned toward the sound of the voice, her breath caught in her throat when she saw that Jack Perdue had pulled his car over to the curb and had rolled down the passenger window.

“I might be,” she told him. “Got any suggestions where I should go?”

He slid across the seat, opened the door and said, “Yeah. Run away with me.”

“Okay.” Without hesitation, she got in the car with Jack.

He was right in her face; her shoulder pressed against his chest. They stared at each other for a full minute, one of the longest minutes of Cathy’s life. And then he slid back across the seat to the driver’s side, and she slammed the door shut.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

He grinned. “How about an early dinner somewhere?”

“Where?”

“Is the Catfish Shack still in business?”

“As far as I know. I haven’t been there in years.” Not since the last time he had taken her there.

The Catfish Shack was a seen-better-days restaurant and bar down by the river. The proprietor had a reputation for serving the best catfish and hush puppies in six counties. The music was loud, the beer flowed like water and all the food was to die for. And better yet, Cathy was relatively sure none of her churchgoing friends would be there. The place was a little too lively for their tastes. And much too sinful.

She had been there only once, years ago, on a date with Jack. She had been seventeen and madly in love.

Jack glanced over his shoulder, back at Lorie’s house. “Do you need to tell anyone where you’re going?”

She shook her head.

“You really are running away, aren’t you?”

“Temporarily.”

“Want to talk about it?” he asked.

“No, not really. I’d rather not think about what happened today or a year ago or eighteen months ago. I’d like to forget about all of it, just for a little while.”

“I’ll see what I can do to give you what you want.”

John Earl took his wife’s hands and held them in his. He wasn’t looking forward to telling her the news that was spreading around town like a deadly wildfire. But she had to be told. The local authorities believed there was a serial killer targeting clergymen. If the man found dead in the park today was indeed Father Brian Myers, he would be the killer’s third victim.

“What is it?” Ruth Ann asked. “I can tell by your expression that this isn’t going to be good news.”

He loved Ruth Ann for so many reasons, not the least of which was her strength and resilience. As a team, they had weathered many of life’s storms together. His wife was indeed his helpmate. He could not imagine his life without her, and he knew she felt the same about him. They were friends, life partners and lovers.

“There was a man’s body found this morning in Spring Creek Park,” John Earl said. “The police believe it was murder.”

“Oh, how terrible. It wasn’t someone we know, was it?”

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