Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, Suzy pulled the door open, braced herself and then walked in.

The smell of dust and mold assaulted her nose the second she entered. She let the door close behind her as she looked around.

“Hello? Is anyone here?” Suzy called out.

Only the echo of her own voice answered her.

Had she gotten the address wrong? Was the kidnapper jerking her around, sending her to the wrong place to show her that he was holding all the cards and that she had none?

But she did hold a card, Suzy silently insisted. She dug in, holding her ground and giving it one more try.

“Look, I came here just like you told me to. Now stop playing games and show yourself, damn it!” she demanded.

There was still no answer, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched. What was this creep’s game?

A Widow’s
Guilty Secret

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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About the Author

MARIE FERRARELLA, a USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author, has written more than two hundred books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

To Patience Bloom,

For constantly making this fun, not work.

Prologue

Mabel Smith knew something was wrong the moment she walked into the house.

She could feel it.

Feel it despite the fact that there were no signs of a struggle and nothing out of place.

The longer she stayed, the more convinced she became that she was right.

As was her custom, the petite, pleasantly plump housekeeper had let herself into Professor Melinda Grayson’s modern, two-story house with her own key. It was a copy of the master key, awarded to her amid much fanfare. She viewed the key as a status symbol, a testimony to her character.

Her employer, Melinda Grayson, did not trust easily, holding the people she dealt with suspect until they proved themselves worthy in her eyes. As someone who cleaned the woman’s house and perforce was given access to every corner of it, she’d been watched with an eagle eye for the better part of two years.

At the beginning of Mabel’s third year of service, the renowned, somewhat controversial and eccentric sociology professor dramatically bestowed her with a copy of the house key, making Mabel literally swear that she would never allow anyone else even to hold it, much less use it. It was a well-known fact that Professor Grayson guarded her own privacy as zealously as she delved into everyone else’s when she was doing research for one of her highly contentious books.

Entering the house that she’d cleaned from top to bottom once a week, Mabel had expected to find the professor somewhere on the premises. The woman’s car, a sky-blue vintage 1957 Chevy Impala, one of her few extravagances, was parked in the driveway. Since that was her only mode of transportation to and from Darby, the college where Dr. Grayson taught, Mabel had assumed that the woman was in the house somewhere, possibly working on a paper or getting lectures ready for the new, upcoming academic year.

But when she called out her greeting, the housekeeper received no answer.

That in itself was no cause for concern. More often than not, the professor was either lost in thought or uncommunicative. However, she always made an appearance within a few minutes of Mabel’s entry, just to make certain that the woman had come alone and hadn’t brought someone with her to help with the work.

Not that she ever did. Dr. Grayson had made it abundantly clear that she did not care to have any uninvited strangers walking across her floors, nor would she tolerate it.

“Something is wrong,” Mabel said to herself, speaking loudly enough for someone else to hear—had there been someone else in the room to hear, which apparently there was not.

Feeling progressively ill at ease with the situation and possessing an extremely healthy and active imagination, Mabel still forced herself to clean the house, hoping she was just being unduly concerned.

When there still appeared to be no sign of the professor, she felt she had no choice but to place a call to the local police.

Private creature or not, she knew the professor would have wanted her to call them.

He didn’t hear the phone ring at first.

Didn’t realize the next few minutes would upend his life.

Oil baron Gabe Dawson was in Malaysia on important business, far away from Vengeance, Texas. He finally picked up the hotel phone.

“Gabe. You need to come home. Now. It’s Melinda,” his assistant said.

It was only when he heard his ex’s name that he froze. Gabe stopped and sat on the bed, braced for the news.

“She was kidnapped.” His assistant gave him some details, but there was little information. Just that someone had made her disappear.

Along with the shock, a wave of nostalgia came over him and he allowed himself to drift back and remember. Remember how things used to be with Melinda. In the beginning. Back when they had been just two overachieving graduate students, wildly in love and bound and determined to leave their marks on the world.

Melinda had been even more focused on that than he’d been. She’d been resolute about making a name for herself—her own name—as if she wanted everyone she had ever known from birth to know that this was what Melinda Grayson had become. It was important to her, to the exclusion of everything else.

Eventually, even he had found himself excluded, standing on the outside of her world.

In hindsight, he supposed they began growing apart almost from the very moment they took their vows before a justice of the peace ten years ago. Melinda started pointing her finger at what she perceived were social injustices, while he, with his well-honed business acumen, became a recognized leader in his field, and exceedingly wealthy to boot.

With his bank accounts totaling in the billions, he, in effect, found himself becoming the enemy against whom Melinda was so profoundly railing.

Looking back, he accepted that their divorce was inevitable.

But in the beginning, ah, the beginning, there had been some really good times. Excellent times.

“What else can you tell me?” Gabe asked.

“It is suspected that the professor was kidnapped from her home. You’re the closest to immediate family that can be located. The Dean of Darby College has put in a plea that the kidnappers get in contact with him and make their demands known.”

“Get me on the next flight,” Gabe said. “I’m her family,” he emphasized. He was aware that Melinda had siblings, but she never talked about them and he never prodded her. The estrangement, he’d gathered, went way back.

Melinda had been his first love. Though they became as different as fire and ice, he’d never loved anyone as much as he had loved her. Most likely, he never would.

If something had happened to Melinda, then he wanted to help get her back. God knew, if money was the issue, it wouldn’t be for long. He had more money than he could possibly spend in a lifetime.

Two lifetimes.

Gabe started toward the winding staircase. He needed to pack.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the very money that Melinda had once turned her nose up at would come to her rescue?

He didn’t know if that would come under the heading of poetic justice or not but it would certainly point to the fact that God had an incredibly sardonic sense of humor.

Chapter 1

Where was he?

Frustrated, Suzy Burris dropped the curtain she’d pushed back from the living room window and sighed loudly. Of all the evenings for Peter to be late getting home, he had to pick this one.

Probably seeing one of his women, she thought angrily.

And if she asked him about it, he’d look at her with that engaging smile of his and tell her he was busy with official business. “County sheriff business,” he’d clarify, and then he’d tell her that he wasn’t at liberty to share that “business” with her. Because she had “no need to know.”

Bull.

That’s all it was. Pure and simple bull. Like all the other times.

And she was tired of it.

Tired of the lies, tired of going through the motions and pretending that everything was all right, when it wasn’t.

And it hadn’t been for a long, long time.

Suzy could feel her whole body vibrating with impatience. She’d finally, finally made up her mind that despite the beautiful two-month-old baby boy mercifully asleep now in the nursery, her marriage to Peter was not about to recover. It had been on life support for a long time now and it was currently in its very last death throes. And while it really bothered her that she’d never loved him the way a wife was supposed to love a husband, there was nothing she could do to change the situation.

Like an epiphany, it had suddenly become crystal clear to her this morning that they, she and Peter, both needed to move on.

Suzy wanted a divorce and although he’d mentioned nothing along those lines himself, she was fairly convinced that her husband wanted it, too. Why else had Peter been tomcatting around like that, turning to other women when she was right there, at home?

It had been hard for her, with her emotional state less than rock solid thanks to what having given birth had done to her hormones. But she’d had to admit to herself that there was no hope for them. No light at the end of the tunnel.

Just more tunnel.

The baby was supposed to have been that light, and his conception and subsequent birth clearly was a tactic that had misfired.

The baby had been a mistake.

Not that she didn’t love Andy more than she’d ever thought humanly possible, but as far as his being the miracle that would heal and save their marriage, well, that just wasn’t going to happen.

Suzy realized that she was back at the living room window, lifting the curtain and staring off into the darkness.

She wanted this to be over with, wanted it behind her.

Breaking her own rule, she’d even tried to call Peter a couple of times, to no avail. The phone had gone to voice mail immediately each time.

He had to be with a woman.

When Peter was on the job as the county’s sheriff, he never shut off his phone. He’d told her that was because he never knew who might be trying to reach him. So if he wasn’t with a woman, why was it off now?

Her frustration mounted as she continued to scan the darkness for some sign that he was finally approaching the driveway.

What was all this drama and mystery about? Or was she reading into things because her impatience insisted on steadily rising with each passing minute?

Given a choice, she wanted to avoid scenes like this morning at breakfast. Despite getting very little sleep the night before because Andy kept fussing, she’d done her best to give patching things up between Peter and her one more try this morning. She’d made Peter breakfast—waffles with eggs and sausages, his favorite—and tried to get some sort of a conversation going.

But she might as well have been trying to program a robot. The words she all but wound up pulling out of her husband had been stilted, cold, as if they were two strangers who’d just met and hadn’t clicked, the way they had at that glitzy Dallas nightclub where she’d first met him.

She had come to socialize that night and Peter had been working private security at the club. The second their eyes met, the attraction had been instant and intense.

The trouble was, that strong physical attraction had never deepened, at least, not for her. At the time, she’d thought that it had for him, that Peter loved her. When he’d asked her to marry him, she’d accepted because she’d hoped that her own feelings would grow somewhere along the line and turn into the kind of love that was the foundation of every strong marriage.

She’d said “I do” praying that would somehow trigger the everlasting love she’d secretly always dreamed about.

She’d wanted the perfect fairy tale, happily-ever-after marriage.

But it never happened.

Although Pete seemed to love her, and he’d never laid a hand on her or physically mistreated her, Suzy knew deep down in her heart that she needed more to lay the foundations for a lasting relationship.

She also felt as if Peter was keeping things from her. Not work-related things but just things. He seemed to lead a secret life apart from the one he shared with her. It got to the point where she felt as if she were dealing with a photograph of a man and the actual three-dimensional man was out of reach.

On the surface, Peter was friendly, outgoing, gregarious, but after several years of marriage, she still knew very little about him. And no details about his childhood.

What husband keeps his past from his wife? What was it that Peter was hiding?

Or was she just being completely paranoid?

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that there isn’t someone after you.

She supposed that she’d been hoping for some sort of last-minute breakthrough with this baby, and that was why, when Peter, completely out of the blue, had suggested having a baby, she’d agreed.

It had been an irresponsible way to go about patching up their relationship. First you had a stable home with two people who loved each other, and then you brought a baby into the equation. You didn’t do it the other way around. You didn’t just make a baby, and then hope everything turned out for the best.

Suzy admitted to herself that she’d been trying to create the exact opposite of what she’d grown up with: two alcoholic parents who were either drunk and passed out on any available flat or semi-flat surface, or going at one another with anything they could get their hands on when they were sober.

And whatever verbal and physical blows they threw that didn’t land on each other, found their target in her—or her younger sister, Lori.

All she’d ever wanted was to be loved and to have someone to lean on. Someone who could be her protector if the occasion arose.

Or at least, that was what she thought she wanted when she’d married Peter. Only recently she realized she wanted more. She wanted someone to talk to. Someone who really talked to her as well. In essence, she wanted someone to share a life with.

That wasn’t Peter.

“Come on, Peter. Come home. I need to get this over with before I lose my nerve,” she pleaded.

Only the darkness heard her.

At thirty-eight, Nick Jeffries felt he’d seen it all—and for the most part, he’d left it behind him. As a former fifteen-year veteran detective on the Houston police force, he’d accepted a position on Vengeance’s police force thinking that it would be a walk in the park and that chilling, stomach-turning homicides were a thing of the past. Vengeance, Texas, was one of those sleepy, picturesque little towns people dreamed about while trapped in a rat race, struggling to stay abreast of the bills, the tax man and soul-numbing, time-sapping boredom.

Apparently that wasn’t the case anymore, Nick thought, looking down at the gruesome discovery made earlier that day by some enterprising geology graduate students. The students had initially been assigned to dig up and catalog several mineral specimens on the private land just on the outskirts of Darby College.

Instead, what they’d found were three male bodies buried in shallow graves and located fairly close to one another.

“Three for the price of one, huh?” Nick murmured sardonically.

The flippant comment was intended for the young man he’d been partnered with but when he looked up, he saw that the tall, baby-faced detective had done a quick about-face and was currently—and miserably—throwing up his breakfast behind the nearest tree.

“That’s okay, Juarez,” Nick assured the younger man, raising his voice so that it carried. “I did the same thing when I saw my first dead body.”

It actually wasn’t true. For the most part, Nick Jeffries had practically been born unshakeable, but he thought it might give the young detective a measure of comfort to know that he wasn’t alone or unique in his misery.

Shaking his head, Nick looked down at the three dead bodies that had been lifted from their graves.

Three separate, shallow graves—not one. Did that mean there were three separate killers, or just one with an odd reverence for the sanctity of death that had made him dig the multiple graves rather than just toss the bodies one on top of another?

And why these particular three people? Was it just convenience? The luck of the draw?

He highly doubted it.

What did these three have in common with each other, other than being buried out here just off the college campus? Did they all die at the same time, or did they meet their respective ends at different times by the same hand?

He supposed at least part of the latter question would be answered by the medical examiner after the autopsies were performed.

He wondered how long that would take and if they even had a medical examiner around here. If not, they were going to have to find one, fast.

There were times when he really missed being in a city like Houston.

“So much for this being a sleepy little college town,” Nick said, talking to Juarez as if the man had rejoined him instead of still heaving up his by now meager stomach contents behind a tree. “And let me tell you, if you thought that the media seemed frenzied and out of control when they converged here, asking questions about that Grayson woman’s kidnapping, wait’ll you see what happens when they get wind of this triple homicide,” he predicted.

With a handkerchief held close to his mouth in case he wasn’t quite finished throwing up what was left of his insides, Jason Juarez, his eyes watering, made his way back to his partner.

When he looked at Nick, his eyes appeared to be bloodshot, definitely the worse for wear.

Nick was tempted to tell him to go home, but that wouldn’t solve anything. The kid needed to tough it out, Nick thought. Still, he couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.

“You think that this is a triple homicide?” Juarez asked him.

It was obvious that the young detective was deliberately avoiding looking down at the uncovered bodies, which had already been on their way to becoming lunch a la carte for all the local rodents, wild animals and insects in the area.

Had he ever been this naive? Nick wondered. Somehow, he didn’t think so.

“Well, there are three bodies buried pretty close to one another,” he said to Juarez, doing his best not to let his impatience show, “and they’re definitely dead, so, logically speaking, I’d say yes, there’s a pretty good possibility that we’re looking at a triple homicide. But if you’re asking me if I think that the same person killed all three victims, that’s something we’re going to have to find—”

Nick abruptly stopped talking and he suddenly squatted down beside the body that was nearest to him. With an unreadable expression on his face, he gave the body a very slow once-over.

The face was not so destroyed that it prevented him from making an identification. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this the county sheriff, Peter Burris?” If that were the case, then this just took on a whole new spectrum of ramifications.

Juarez paled slightly beneath his peaked complexion. “Are you asking me to look closer?” he asked warily.

Nick rolled his eyes. “That might be helpful, yeah,” he retorted.

One of the uniformed policemen, older by a couple of decades than the queasy detective, took pity on Juarez—who looked as if he wanted to bolt for the trees again—and made his way over to the body in question.

Looking at what was left of the man on the ground, the officer nodded, confirming Nick’s query.

“It’s the sheriff all right.” Somewhat intrigued rather than repulsed, the policeman squinted and took a closer look at the other two bodies that had been unearthed at the same time. Genuine surprise registered on his leathery face. “And that looks like Senator Merris. Saw him at a fund-raiser once. I was part of the security detail.” His own words seemed to hit him and he appeared properly stunned. “Holy cow, this is a real live senator.”

“Not quite,” Nick pointed out.

“Yeah,” the policeman agreed. “There’s that.” He looked up at Nick, the magnitude of the situation finally hitting him. “This is big.”

Rather than comment on what seemed to be very obvious—and since Juarez was still struggling even to glance down, Nick directed the officer’s attention to the third body. “You know him?”

The older man shuffled closer and looked at the last dead man intently for several seconds. He frowned, frustrated.

“He seems familiar, but—” he shook his head helplessly. “Sorry, can’t place him.”

Striking out, Nick looked pointedly at Juarez. “How about you?”

Unable to get around his duty any longer, Juarez was forced to take a look. Actually, it was more like taking a fleeting glance in the body’s direction. Exhaling the breath he’d been holding, Juarez shook his dark head adamantly.

“No, I don’t know him,” he confirmed with relief.

But the policeman wasn’t through as he continued to study the only unidentified man. Circling the body, he looked at the face from every angle.

Finally, he said, “I think he used to live around here before he went off to California—or maybe it was some other place out West.” He glanced up at Nick. “He had family here if it’s the guy I’m thinking of. I can ask around,” he offered.

“You do that,” Nick turned the offer into an instruction.

Then he turned to his boy partner. Juarez’s face still lacked color. He made up his mind that come tomorrow, if things didn’t change, he was working this case solo. Juarez’s wife was due soon with their first child. Maybe the younger detective could take some time off and be of some use to her.

But that still left today. “You up to doing a little traveling?” he asked.

Rather than immediately answering, Juarez asked uneasily, “To where?”

“I think we need to inform the sheriff’s wife that she just became his widow.”

In his experience, approximately 50 percent of the men and women who were killed died at the hands of their spouse. Whether this was the case in Burris’s murder remained to be seen. The sooner he ruled out the sheriff’s other half, the sooner he could move on and maybe even find out exactly who was responsible for this modern-day bloodbath in a sleepy town.

He scanned what might or might not have been the actual crime scene. Things would never be the same.

Not for a lot of people.

“Did you forget your key?” Suzy called out as she yanked open the front door in response to the ringing doorbell.

It wouldn’t have been the first time that Peter had forgotten his house key. But if everything went right, it would be one of the last, she thought.

Suzy did her best to contain the nervous anticipation that all but vibrated through her. She’d been up for most of the night, not because of the baby, but because she kept hearing Peter come through the door.

Each and every time it just turned out to be her imagination, hard at work. What that meant, she decided, was that she really wanted to get this divorce matter out and on its way.

Throwing open the front door, she found herself on the receiving end of a surprise. And not the pleasant kind, she couldn’t help thinking.

Suzy instinctively took a step back.

Her hand on the doorknob, she started to close the door again, intent on locking out the strangers on her doorstep.

The sheriff’s wife was quick, but Nick was quicker. He blocked her motion with his hand, at the same time putting his foot over the sill to keep the door from closing.

“We need to talk with you, Mrs. Burris,” Nick said as his tongue-tied partner appeared somewhat startled by her behavior and all too ready to retreat.

Nick watched as suspicion came and then went from the pretty blonde’s cornflower-blue eyes. She appeared to regard them both in silence for a moment, then said in a hushed tone, “You know my name. Why is it you know my name?”

She had a bad feeling about this—and it was escalating by the moment as she waited for an answer. She looked from one man to the other, then back at the older detective. Waiting.

“Would you mind if we stepped inside, Mrs. Burris?” Nick suggested, gesturing into her house. He was surprised when she remained planted before him. “This isn’t the kind of thing a person likes to hear while standing in the doorway of her house.”

Suzy raised her chin, thinking herself already prepared for the worst. “Sitting on the sofa isn’t going to change whatever it is that you have to say to me, Detective …” She deliberately let her voice trail off, waiting for the tall, strikingly handsome dark-haired man to fill in the blank.

“Jeffries,” he told her, then nodded toward Juarez. “And this is Detective Juarez,” he added before going back to what she’d said. “No, it won’t,” Nick readily agreed. “But it just might help you to cushion the shock—no pun intended,” he interjected when his own words played themselves back in his head. He didn’t want her to think he was being flip at her expense.

Cushion the shock. Just how great a shock, she wondered. Suzy felt oddly numb, yet still somehow in control. Or so she told herself.

“Is he hurt?” she asked in a voice so quiet, it was almost a whisper. “Is my husband hurt?” she amended when neither man standing on her doorstep answered her.

“It’s worse than that, ma’am,” Nick told her, trying to be as gentle as possible.

Suzy felt her stomach lurch, then turn over. She struggled to pull herself together. She could handle this, she told herself. Whatever the somber-looking detective in the dark suit had to tell her, she could handle it. She could handle anything. She had to. She had practically a newborn depending on her. She had to remember that.

“May I see some identification, please?” she requested, holding whatever the older detective was about to say to her at bay.

Juarez fumbled for his wallet, searching his pockets, while Nick took his out and flipped it open to display his badge and ID.

Suzy could feel panic well up inside her. She barely glanced at the man’s wallet, but his image registered.

“Worse than hurt,” she heard herself repeating as she raised her eyes to the man’s face. That could only mean one thing. Her lips felt frozen as she asked, “Is my husband dead, Detective Jeffries?”

Nick felt a wave of pity stirring. “I’m sorry to have to tell you that, Mrs. Burris, but yes, I’m afraid he is.”

Every inch of skin on her body alternated between extreme heat and extreme cold.

Dead.

Peter’s dead.

She waited for the wave of sorrow, of devastation to hit. But it didn’t. In its place, instead, was guilt. Guilt that she didn’t feel grief over his death, other than the kind of grief she might have experienced after hearing of a neighbor’s death.

What kind of a person was she? Suzy silently demanded.

“You were right,” Suzy said to the older detective, her voice sounding rather tinny to her ears as the words seemed to echo in her head.

“Right about what?” Nick asked, puzzled as he looked at her.

It was getting hard for her to breathe. “About this being easier to take on a sofa.”

It was the last thing Suzy remembered saying before the bright, sunny world filtering in through her doorway went completely black.

Chapter 2

Nick prided himself on the fact that his reflexes had always been quick. This time was no exception.

One minute he was talking to the unfortunate, freshly minted widow. The next he was stretching out to catch her and keep her head—as well as the rest of her—from hitting the floor.

Beside him, Juarez stood frozen, almost in as much shock, in his own way, as the sheriff’s widow. His partner was definitely in need of a crash course that would teach him exactly how to be a useful member of the police force. Right now, the man was undoubtedly well meaning, but also rather useless. The man had a great deal to learn before he could be considered a good detective.

Nick was fairly convinced that Jason Juarez had found himself in his present position only because he was related to someone either on the force, or someone who was embedded within Vengeance’s less-than-dynamic town counsel. Whichever it was, the so-called guardian angel might be trying to be kind to the young man, but in the interim, he or she was setting the course of detective work back by half a century.

Juarez, he knew, was relieved when the FBI special agents had descended on the town and, specifically, the “dig” where the bodies had been found. They’d been summoned by the town fathers because one of the victims was Senator Merris. The special agents had been set to take over the entire crime scene, but he had managed to get them to agree that this would be worked as a team effort. That meant that information would be shared—supposedly.

Nick turned his attention to the woman he’d just caught. When he’d made his initial assessment of her, he’d judged that she weighed under a hundred pounds. If he wasn’t right on target, he was close. Suzy Burris felt as if she weighed next to nothing at all.

Striding into the house ahead of the flustered Juarez, his arms full of unconscious damsel in distress, Nick headed straight for the sofa.

“Get the door, Juarez,” he tossed over his shoulder at his partner.

It took the detective a second to process the order, and another second for embarrassment to creep up his lanky torso, reaching his cheeks and turning them a faint shade of pink.

“You want it closed?” he asked.

“No, I want you to take it off the hinges and take it with us when we leave,” Nick bit off sarcastically as he lay the woman down on the sofa. “Yeah, I want it closed,” he snapped quickly before the befuddled, wet-behind-the-ears detective took him at his word and started removing the door from its hinges. He wouldn’t have put it past him.

The door shut and then he heard Juarez hurrying over to the sofa.

“Is she—is she all right?” the younger man asked nervously. He shifted slightly from foot to foot as he hovered about like a confused hummingbird, searching for a destination where he could alight.

“She just found out that her husband’s dead, what do you think?” Nick asked, trying not to let his irritation break through. Part of that irritation had to do with the fact that he had yet to tell the woman the worst part: that her husband had been murdered.

No doubt feeling foolish, Juarez looked down at the unconscious woman. “I guess she’s not all right.”

There was sympathy in the younger man’s voice.

At least he had the right emotional response, Nick thought. That was a start, although being too sympathetic wasn’t a good thing, either. Nick was convinced of that. It wasn’t exactly recommended for someone in their line of work. Getting too involved could get in the way, clouding their judgment and hindering them from doing their job right.

At least, that had been the case back in Houston.

Out here, when he’d accepted the job, he’d just assumed that police work involved tracking down lost dogs and occasionally finding a child who had wandered off from his or her parents. Solving homicides like the ones they were faced with came as a complete and utter surprise to him. While it was, sadly, right up his alley, Nick had come to Vengeance to take an extended break from that sort of thing.

Still, he had to admit that part of him felt suddenly alive again. He hadn’t missed the nonstop pressure of the life he’d led as a detective in Houston, but he did find that he missed the challenges that sort of life had perpetually thrown at him.

At least occasionally.

“Make yourself useful,” he instructed Juarez. “Get me a compress for her head.”

The younger detective looked a little lost as he glanced about the room, as if searching for something to use to make this happen.

Nick sighed. This partnership was going to test his patience. If Juarez got in the way, the feds were going to want them both off the case—and as far as he was concerned, Vengeance was now his town and that made the murdered men his case.

“Kitchen, towel.” Nick snapped out the words in staccato fashion, firing them at Juarez as if they were bullets. “Make it wet. Cold water,” he emphasized as Juarez headed toward the section of the house where he assumed the kitchen was located. “Don’t forget to wring it out,” Nick added, raising his voice so that the other man could hear him.

Otherwise, Juarez would probably be bringing him a towel that left a trail of dripping water in its wake.

A beat later, Juarez cheerfully called back, “Got it!”

Nick shook his head, mentally telling himself to be patient.

When he glanced back down at the sheriff’s widow, her eyes were open and she looked up at him, appearing somewhat dazed.

“Welcome back,” he said, then placed his hands on her shoulders in gentle restraint as Suzy tried to sit up. “I’d hold off on that for a couple of minutes or so if I were you,” he counseled, then added with a marginally amused smile, “Remember what happened the last time you ignored my advice.”

Suzy sighed and remained where she was, even though it made her tense to lie down in a stranger’s presence. For a second, she closed her eyes again, trying to regain her bearings.

“This isn’t some cruel joke, is it?”

He heard the hopeful note in her voice and caught himself feeling sorry for her. The next moment, he banked down that emotion. He knew from experience that that was only asking for trouble.

“I’m afraid not.”

She opened her eyes to look up at the man who had unwittingly thrown her world into such turmoil. “Peter’s really dead?”

“He’s really dead,” Nick confirmed. “His body was found in a shallow grave by a group of geology grad students.” After that, all hell had broken loose. It was going to be hard keeping a lid on the investigation, what with the news media already poking around.

Suzy was having trouble thinking, trouble processing this. She’d been so focused on telling Peter she wanted a divorce that this had completely thrown her for a loop.

And unleashed a great deal of guilt.

“How did he die? Was it a car accident?” she asked hoarsely.

“No.” His voice was emotionless, giving nothing away. “The sheriff appeared to have been choked to death.”

Her eyes widened in astonishment. “Someone killed him?”

Nick nodded, thinking that, all things considered, she was handling this rather well. “It certainly looks that way.”

“Who?” she whispered, hardly able to force the word out.

“That’s what we’re currently trying to find out,” Nick told her honestly.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other detective approaching. Contrary to instructions, Juarez had brought back a dripping towel. He held it out to Nick like a peace offering.

Nick made no attempt to take it from him. “Mrs. Burris is conscious again, Juarez. We won’t be needing that now.” Then, because the detective appeared to be at loose ends as to what to do with the now unnecessary towel, Nick ordered, “Take the towel back to the kitchen, Juarez.”

Happy to be given instructions to follow, the younger man quickly retraced his steps and eagerly did as he was told.

“You’re very patient with him,” Suzy observed.

It struck her as odd, even as she said the words, that she would notice something so insignificant, given what she’d just been told. Was she going crazy? Or was she just being insensitive to Peter’s fate? Neither answer seemed like the right one.

Nick shrugged off the comment and the implied compliment behind it. “He reminds me of my kid brother,” he told her. He hadn’t realized that until just now, he thought, but now that he’d said it out loud, he realized that Juarez and Eddie had the same lost puppy appeal, the same eagerness to please.

It took him a second to realize that the sheriff’s widow was asking him something.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, can I sit up now?” she repeated. She didn’t feel up to being restrained again. She wasn’t even certain just how she’d react to that.

Right now, all sorts of emotions collided within her as disbelief, anger, guilt and a sliver of relief all vied for practically the same space.

The last reaction made her ashamed. Peter had been, after all, her husband and the father of her child, relief over his death, even the barest hint of it, shouldn’t be entering into the equation, she upbraided herself.

Even worse was what was missing.

What she realized was conspicuously missing was grief. Where is the grief? she silently demanded. Shouldn’t she be feeling that predominately instead of all these other emotions that were racing through her?

What was wrong with her?

“Slowly,” the detective was saying to her.

She blinked, confused. Had she missed something? “What?”

“You can sit up,” Nick repeated. “But do it slowly,” he cautioned. “You really don’t want to get dizzy and pass out again.”

She didn’t like the frailty his warning implied. It wasn’t as if she was made out of spun glass. If she had been, she would have shattered long before now.

“That was the first time I ever passed out,” Suzy informed him with a touch of annoyance in her voice.

“First time you had a husband who was murdered, I suspect,” Nick speculated.

Suzy flushed. She could feel the color rising to her cheeks, making them hot.

“Yes,” she answered hoarsely, waiting to see where he was going with this.

“Drastic news brings out drastic results,” he told her matter-of-factly. “Want some water?” Without waiting for an answer, he glanced at Juarez. His partner was just coming back into the room. “Juarez, get Mrs. Burris a glass of water.”

Without a word, the other detective turned on his heel and went back to the kitchen.

“Makes him feel useful,” Nick said in response to the protest he saw hovering on the widow’s perfectly formed lips.

“You always anticipate everything?” she couldn’t help asking.

He flashed her another amused smile. Amid the vulnerability, he detected a feisty streak. He found it rather appealing.

“Saves time,” he told her. “But no, I don’t always anticipate everything, just the obvious things.”

“Like my fainting,” she assumed.

“Being told that a spouse was murdered usually comes as a shock to the person doing the listening,” he said, never taking his eyes off hers.

Suzy heard the detective’s emphasis on the telltale word: usually. Did that mean he thought that she was innocent, or did he actually think she had something to do with Peter’s murder? If the latter, she knew she should be outraged at the very idea, but she still felt too drained, too devastated by the news, to summon that sort of a response.

“It did,” she told him as firmly as she could, the look in her eyes challenging him to say something different.

Juarez had returned with a tall glass filled to the very brim with water. Nick put his hand out for it, then offered it to the widow.

Suzy took the glass with both hands to hold it steady and drank deeply. Strange as it seemed, the cold water helped her pull herself together and focus.

She couldn’t allow herself to go to pieces. There was no one around to help her put those pieces back together again. No one to really rely on, except herself.

Just like the old days.

“Thank you,” she said to Juarez, offering him the near-empty glass. Her words elicited a shy smile from the young detective as he took the glass from her.

“My pleasure, ma’am.”

Ma’am. She was way too young to be a ma’am. Or maybe she wasn’t. After all, she was someone’s mother now.

“You up to some questions?” the other detective asked her. She nodded, wanting to get this over with. “When did you last see your husband?”

“Yesterday morning at breakfast.” That seemed like a hundred years ago now, she thought. Had it only been a mere twenty-four hours?

“Did he seem particularly preoccupied or troubled to you?” the detective asked.

She looked at this stranger for a long moment, wondering how to answer his question. Did she tell him that she and Peter had grown apart? That they hardly spoke to one another these last few days, except to talk about the baby? Or did she keep her secret and pretend that everything had been just fine?

Pressing her lips together, Suzy paused for a moment as she searched for some plausible middle ground. “If you’re asking me if he seemed different than usual yesterday, the answer is no, he didn’t.”

Her words, Nick noted, were carefully orchestrated. He read between the lines.

“How long have you and your husband been having marital problems?” he asked gently.

The question surprised not only Suzy, but the other detective as well. Juarez stared at him, openmouthed. “You didn’t tell me you knew the sheriff and his wife, Nick,” Juarez said, sounding slightly irritated at being shut out this way.

“I don’t, do I, Mrs. Burris?” Nick asked, looking at the woman.

She didn’t bother addressing his last question as she focused on the one that not only caught her off guard, but upset her, as well. She didn’t want any dirty laundry to mar Peter’s memory. As far as the people in the county were concerned, he was an exemplary sheriff.

“What makes you think we were having problems?” she asked.

The question told him all he asked. He was right. Had there been no problems, she might have issued an indignant denial, or at the very least, stared at him as if he was being boorish. But she didn’t. She was defensive. Because there was something to be defensive about.

“Let’s just say I’ve been there,” he answered evasively.

This wasn’t about him, and Nick had no intentions of revisiting his own failed attempt at marital bliss. He’d married far too young and it had all fallen apart on them not that long after the vows. In keeping with his marriage, he’d been divorced young as well. He’d learned a lesson along the way: He was no good at marriage.

“Were you two talking?” he asked, trying to sound as kind as he could under the circumstances.

“Yes,” she snapped back, then shrugged helplessly as she amended, “But just barely.” She paused again, searching for a way to phrase what she wanted to say. “We’ve just had a baby—”

“Congratulations,” Juarez said with enthusiasm. “Me, too. I mean, my wife, too—except not yet. I mean—”

“He means his wife’s due anytime now,” Nick interjected. He’d heard about nothing else this entire last week. “Go on,” he coaxed Suzy, “you were saying …?” He trailed off, waiting for her to fill in the blanks.

“Despite that, Peter’s been rather distant lately,” she admitted.

The next moment, she regretted the words. Why was she baring her soul to these men? What did any of this have to do with whoever had killed Peter?

“Some men feel threatened by a baby,” Nick told her, recalling what he’d once heard. “They think that they’re being replaced in their wives’ affections.”

Suzy shook her head. She wanted to stop any further conjecture before it got too out of hand.

“Having the baby was Peter’s idea,” she told him, then added, “he thought that the baby would bring us closer together.”

He noticed she didn’t say “again,” which meant that they probably hadn’t been all that close to begin with. Nick decided to press a little further. “How bad did it get?”

Enough was enough. Suzy’s own protective instincts, the same one that had her protecting her sister from their parents’ inebriated wrath, kicked in.

She glared at this intruding detective. “What does any of this have to do with my husband’s murder?” she demanded.

“Just trying to establish the sheriff’s frame of mind the last few days before he was killed,” he replied matter-of-factly.

She really didn’t like exposing her private life like this to strangers, but then, what did it matter, anyway? Peter was dead and that meant her world would have to go through some pretty drastic changes—even faster than she’d initially anticipated. After all, she had been planning to divorce Peter. All in all, a divorce was rather a drastic life change in itself.

She blew out a breath and plunged in. “I was going to ask Peter for a divorce when he got home last night.” She addressed her words to her shoes, not feeling up to making eye contact with the detective who was doing all the questioning right about now.

But then, he’d probably take that as some sort of a silent admission of guilt, she realized. Blowing out another breath, she forced herself to look up at the man.

“Except that he didn’t,” she said quietly once she’d reestablished eye contact.

Something sharp pricked at his insides the moment their eyes met. Nick tried to shrug it off. It didn’t budge.

“I see,” he said without a shred of emotion evident in his voice, successfully masking his feelings.

It was at that moment that Detective Nick Jeffries made a stunning and rather uncomfortable discovery. He realized that he was attracted to this woman, deeply attracted. Moreover, it wasn’t just her delicate looks that had hooked and reeled him in, it was her underlying vulnerability, which he could see she tried to cover up at all costs.

But the very existence of that vulnerability had awakened his dormant protective streak, a streak he had thought he’d successfully laid to rest more than a few years ago.

Apparently, he’d thought wrong.

Chapter 3

As Nick tried to bury this unsettling and somewhat annoying realization, Juarez’s cellphone rang.

Juarez snapped to attention and seemed to go on high alert even before he pulled his phone out of his pocket. He blinked, clearing his vision, and then looked at the screen to identify the caller.

Rather than just answer it, the young detective continued to stare at the name, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Finally, he glanced up at Nick and said numbly, “It’s my wife.” The next moment, he shivered as a sudden attack of nerves seized him. His mouth choked out, “This could be it.”

“It?” Nick repeated. Completely focused on the sheriff’s widow, he had no idea what his partner was talking about.

Juarez nodded, still staring at the phone. “The baby’s due anytime now,” he said, repeating what he’d said earlier—and the day before, and the day before that. “She could be calling to tell me that she’s in labor.” His voice took on a panicked note as it went up two octaves, then cracked.

“Don’t you think you should answer it, then?” Nick coaxed, utterly mystified at the way his partner’s mind seemed to work—if indeed it actually was working at all, which he was beginning to doubt.

“Yeah, right,” Juarez cried.

He fumbled with the cellphone, managing to almost disconnect himself from the incoming call before he finally hit the right key to answer it.

Juarez’s hands visibly shook as he put the cellphone to his ear. “Tina? Is it time?” His eyes grew huge as he listened to his wife’s answer. Literally stunned, his eyes shifted over to look at Nick. “It’s time,” he announced breathlessly.

He gave every indication that he was about to hyperventilate.

“Then I suggest you start breathing evenly, get in your car and go,” Nick responded, uttering each word slowly, as if he were speaking to someone who was mentally challenged.

“Right. Go.” As if someone had fired a starter pistol, Juarez scrambled for the door. But when he reached it, he suddenly came to a skidding stop. The rest of his brain—the part that knew it was on duty—kicked in. “What about you?” the younger detective asked. “If I take the car, you’ll be stranded. How are you going to get back to the squad room?”

Nick waved away his concern. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll call someone,” he told the other man, his tone confident. And then he ordered, “Go. Your wife needs you. And try not to hit anything on your way there,” he called after the swiftly departing detective.

“Okay,” Juarez yelled back.

When Nick looked back at the sheriff’s widow, she had an odd expression on her face. He couldn’t begin to interpret it.

“Something wrong?” he asked her.

Suzy shook her head. “I just envy his wife, that’s all,” she said wistfully. “He looked really excited about becoming a father.”

“He looked really clueless,” Nick corrected. “And so far, that seems to be pretty much his natural state,” he added in what turned out to be a completely unguarded moment. It was out of character for him. As a rule, he didn’t usually let on what he thought of the people he worked with—or the ones he questioned for that matter.

“Still, he loves her.” And love had a way of making up for a host of failings, she thought. “You can see it in his eyes.”

Nick took his cue from her wording, following it through. “And what did you see when you looked into your husband’s eyes?” he asked, curious as to what her answer would be.

Suzy shrugged in a careless manner that seemed a little too precise to him—and possibly practiced. “Barriers. Walls. Someone I didn’t know.”

And that, she knew, had been the true reason for the death of their marriage. Because she’d realized that after all this time, Peter was more of a stranger to her now than he had been when they’d first gotten married.

Was the woman saying that because it was how she’d actually felt, or was she laying the groundwork to distance herself from whatever the investigation would turn up about the sheriff?

She wasn’t as easy to read as he’d first thought. Nick felt himself being reeled in a little further, despite his resistance to the idea. He knew he was on slippery footing.

“Did your husband have any enemies?” Nick asked her.

Suzy thought for a moment, but it really didn’t matter how long she took, she decided. She would arrive at the same conclusion: she didn’t think so, but she didn’t know for sure.

With a sigh, Suzy shook her head. “Not that he ever mentioned, but to be honest, I really don’t know. I know that Peter was away at night more and more. When I asked him about it a couple of times, he said that he was working late on a case.” It had sounded like an excuse to her at the time, but maybe she was doing Peter a disservice. “Maybe he was,” she said out loud. “But at the time, I thought that there was another woman in the picture—or six.”

How had she arrived at that number, Nick wondered. Most women would have said one or two. “Six?”

When he said the number, it sounded foolish. Suzy shrugged. “Sorry, that was flippant. I really don’t know how many he was seeing—or if he actually was seeing someone else. My pregnancy had me pretty miserable and looking back, maybe I took it out on him.”

Added to that, she’d worked until a little more than a week before she delivered. What that translated to, Suzy thought, was that she and Peter hardly saw each other toward the end.

Nick wasn’t quite ready to allow this line of questioning to drop just yet. “Did you ever find anything concrete to back up these suspicions, something that might have got you thinking he was seeing someone else?”

“I didn’t look,” she admitted, unconsciously raising her chin again defensively. “I didn’t want to be one of those snooping, bitter women.” Besides, she thought, as long as she didn’t find anything, there was always the hope that she was wrong. Other times, she was fairly sure she wasn’t wrong. “To be honest,” she continued in a distant, quiet voice, “I was a little relieved when I thought that Peter was seeing someone else.”

Nick came to his own conclusions: a guilty conscience might welcome a level playing field. “Because you were seeing someone, as well?” he guessed, watching her face intently.

Stunned, she stared at him. Despite the growing chasm between Peter and her, she’d never once thought of seeking solace in someone else’s arms. She might not have been in love with Peter, but she was definitely loyal to the institution of marriage.

“What?” she cried, thinking she’d heard wrong. But the expression on the detective’s face told her that she hadn’t. “No, of course not. Why would you say something like that?” she asked.

“Just a natural assumption,” he answered mildly. “If your husband was seeing someone, that made you feel less guilty about you seeing someone.”

“You have it all wrong,” she informed him with more than a touch of indignation.

“Then enlighten me.”

Suzy took a breath. She really didn’t like baring her soul this way, but she knew she had no choice. If she kept things back from this man, she was certain that he would think the worst.

“If Peter was seeing someone else, that would have made me feel less guilty about not having feelings for him.”

Now, there was a novel approach to marital discord, Nick couldn’t help thinking. “I see. And when did you stop having feelings for him?”

Suzy shrugged again, her slender shoulders rising and falling beneath the light blue cotton blouse she had on. She thought of telling the detective that was none of his business, but he’d probably counter that protest by telling her that right now it was. She might as well avoid a verbal squabble with him and just answer the question.

“I don’t think I ever started to have feelings for Peter, not the deep, everlasting kind. Don’t get me wrong,” she cautioned quickly, not wanting the detective to come away with the wrong impression. “There was a really intense attraction between us from the very first moment we met, but there turned out to be nothing behind it, nothing substantial. At least, not for me,” she told him sadly. With all her heart she wished that there could have been. But this was a case where wishing just didn’t make it so.

“But there was for him?” Nick questioned, watching her closely.

To him, half of police work was getting a feeling for the person you were dealing with, looking beneath their layers, their complexities. He was fairly certain that he would be able to tell if this woman was lying to him.

The answer to the last question was yes, but how did she get that across without sounding conceited?

“Well, Peter said he loved me, that he wanted to take care of me for the rest of my life,” Suzy said. A rueful smile curved her mouth as she remembered the first stages of their relationship, before the wedding ring, the disappointments and the baby. “You have no idea how good that sounded to me at the time.”

She raised her eyes to Nick and he saw a defensiveness entering the bright blue orbs, as if the woman dared him to find fault in her words.

“I had less than an ideal childhood,” Suzy added by way of an explanation, “and just wanted someone to care whether I lived or died. Peter said he did.” At the time, that seemed to be enough of a basis for marriage. “So I married him, hoping that I’d eventually feel the same way about him.”

“But you didn’t.” It wasn’t really a guess at this point but a conclusion drawn from what she’d already told him.

“Well, I didn’t want him dead.” And then she relented slightly, adding, “But I didn’t particularly want him living with me. Especially when he was growing so distant—not that I really blamed him for that.” This was all coming out really badly. To her ear, it sounded as if she was digging herself into a hole. “I began to think that the whole thing—marrying Peter—was a mistake.

“The baby wasn’t a mistake,” Suzy quickly added in the next breath, anticipating what the detective was probably thinking. “But on the other hand, no baby should be used as a way to keep a marriage together. It’s not fair to the baby or to the two people involved.”

That all sounded very noble. Maybe too noble, Nick thought. “Do you know how much insurance your husband was carrying?”

Suzy frowned, confused for a moment. “Life insurance?”

“Yes, life insurance,” he repeated, a trace of impatience in his voice. “How much was your husband carrying?”

She was still reeling from news of Peter’s murder. Practical questions like the one the detective had just posed hadn’t even occurred to her yet.

“I have no idea,” she told him. “As far as I know, he wasn’t carrying any.” And then, although she didn’t want to believe anyone would even remotely think this horrible way about her, that she would kill someone, especially her husband, for money, Suzy demanded, “Why? Do you think I had him killed so I could get the insurance money?”

The whole thing was too ludicrous to believe—yet the detective obviously saw it as a possibility. Suzy didn’t know whether to be angry—or afraid. Was she going to need a lawyer on top of everything else?

Nick deliberately didn’t answer her directly. “It’s been known to happen.”

“Well, not as far as I’m concerned,” she retorted angrily. Stress and overworked hormones had her fairly shouting at him. “I’m an accountant. I have a good job and I don’t need extra money from some stupid life insurance policy.”

“Everyone needs extra money,” Nick told her matter-of-factly. And women had killed their husbands for reasons other than money.

Her eyes flashed. Okay, she was getting really tired of this verbal sparring match. If he thought she’d killed Peter for the money, she wanted him to come out and just say it.

“Are you trying to accuse me of something, Detective?”

Just then, before he could respond, they heard the baby begin to cry, Andy’s wails clearly audible over the baby monitor she’d placed on the coffee table. There were two more monitors scattered throughout the first floor, one in the kitchen, one in the bedroom.

But Suzy remained where she was. Waiting for an answer.

“No,” Nick told her, “I’m trying to rule you out of something, Mrs. Burris. Where were you yesterday?”

She walked away from him and went up to the nursery. Her son needed her. “Here. At home.”

Nick was right behind her, following the woman up the stairs. Walking behind her was eventful, he caught himself thinking as he watched the gentle, rhythmic sway of her hips as she went up the stairs.

“Can someone verify that?”

Stopping at the landing, Suzy looked back at him, a cynical expression on her face. It was her mask, allowing her to hide from certain people.

“The baby,” she answered flatly.

He laughed shortly. The kid was a bit too young to take on the role of witness. “Can anyone older verify that?”

She thought for a moment as she went into the baby’s room. It was everything that her own room—hers and her sister Lori’s—was not. The space was cheerfully decorated in bright yellows and greens since she’d opted not to know the baby’s gender until after he was born. It proclaimed to the world that a child was happy here—also not like her childhood bedroom.

The second she entered the nursery, Suzy did her best to shift gears. She smiled brightly at the fussing baby in the crib. At two months old, Andy was the picture of perpetual motion, his little arms and legs all going at once.

“Hi, little man. Miss me?” she murmured.

Picking up the baby, Suzy turned to look back at the detective. She expected him to be out in the hallway and was surprised to see that he had followed her into the room.

Just what did he expect to find in her son’s room?

“The mailman saw me,” she finally told him. “He came early and I had a bill I wanted to mail, so I hurried out before he pulled away.”

That helped, but a mailman could easily be dissuaded from remembering certain facts, especially if a class act like Suzy Burris was doing the “dissuading.”

“Anyone else?” Nick asked.

Suzy resented this, resented all the questions, even though she knew that it was necessary and, most likely, routine.

“My sister called me at around four o’clock yesterday to see how I was doing. Does that count?”

He nodded, couching his words carefully. “If it checks out on your phone bill, it does.”

“Not a very trusting soul, are you?” she tossed over her shoulder.

From the ripe smell that was coming from Andy’s lower half, she knew that the first order of business was to change him. She took him over to the changing table. Both ends of the table were buffered with the latest, most absorbent diapers on the market. Never having so much as looked at a diaper until two months ago, she’d gotten very proficient at changing them in the past eight weeks.

“It’s not a very trusting line of business,” Nick answered. “You should know that,” he added, “seeing as how your husband was the county sheriff.”

Was. Not is. It was really hard to absorb that, she thought.

“Like I said,” Suzy said out loud with emphasis, “I wasn’t privy to my husband’s professional life. Or his private one, it’s beginning to seem,” she added under her breath. She spared Nick another glance as she deftly went about the task of getting rid of the soiled diaper and putting a brand-new one on the baby. “And as far as alibis go—that’s what this is about, right?—this is my alibi,” she informed him, nodding at the baby on the changing table. “Andy kept me busy all day. He hardly slept at all. That didn’t leave me any time to—how was my husband killed?” she asked, suddenly realizing that she couldn’t remember if the detective had told her that or not. If he had, she’d blocked it out. But now she wanted to know.

Had Peter been shot, stabbed, strangled or mowed down by some vehicle? The very thought of each method made her want to shiver.

“You really don’t want to know,” Nick told her quietly.

“Yes, I do,” she said emphatically. In a strange way, she felt she owed it to Peter to know all the details regarding his death. She could at least do that much for him.

“All right—just remember, you asked to hear this. Your husband was strangled,” Nick told her crisply. “The medical examiner will give the official verdict, but from the looks of it, I’d say someone put a plastic bag over the sheriff’s head and held it tight against his face until he suffocated.”

Now she did shiver, visualizing the scenario in her mind. Peter might not have been the husband she’d always dreamed of, but he didn’t deserve to die like that.

He didn’t deserve to die at all, but to live a long life, being there for his son even if they weren’t going to be there for each other much longer. She hoped he hadn’t suffered.

“How do you know it was a plastic bag?” she asked. “Maybe someone just strangled him with their bare hands—or hung him.” Each method she suggested just made it that much worse for her. But now that the detective was talking about it, she wanted all the details—and then she’d lock this subject away forever. She never wanted to revisit it for any reason.

“Well, for one thing, there were no dark ligature marks around his neck. If he was hung or manually strangled, there would have been telltale marks left around his neck.”

Nick paused a moment, thinking of the card that had been found on the sheriff’s person. Specifically, in his pocket. Similar cards, with something different written on each, were found on the other two men who had been dug up.

He considered withholding this from her, then decided that it might be better out in the open. You never knew where something might lead.

“He had a card on him.”

“A card?” she repeated, puzzled. “You mean like a playing card or a business card?”

“More like the kind that’s used to print business cards, except that there was nothing printed on it except for just one word, and that was handwritten.”

She didn’t know why she instinctively braced herself, but she did. “What was the word?”

“Liar.”

Suzy blinked and stared at him. Had he just accused her of lying? About what? “Excuse me?” she cried.

“That was the word written on the card—liar,” he explained. “Would you know anyone who would accuse your husband of being a liar?”

She shook her head, painfully aware that she was no help in finding Peter’s killer. The detective was probably tired of hearing her negative answers. But she couldn’t exactly tell him what she didn’t know.

“Can’t think of a single person. As far as I know, Peter was regarded as a pillar of the community, a real good guy. I don’t know of anyone who would accuse him of being a liar. Unless it was one of the women he was seeing,” she amended. Now that she said it out loud, his “good guy” status was on shaky ground.

Suzy shrugged her shoulders again in a hapless gesture. “And, like I already told you, I don’t even have any proof that he was seeing other women. It wasn’t as if I’d found any love notes in his pockets, or any lipstick smeared on his collar. It was just a feeling I had,” she admitted, “because things were so strained between us lately.”

“Maybe that wasn’t your fault,” Nick suggested. When she glanced in his direction, confusion written on her features, he added, “Maybe the sheriff was acting that way because of whatever got him killed.”

She supposed it was possible. But then, why hadn’t Peter said something? Why had he shouldered this burden on his own?

A ragged sigh broke free as she finished changing the baby.

She looked at the detective, her eyes meeting his. Hers were guilt ridden. “He should have talked to me, told me what was going on.”

“Maybe he just didn’t want to burden you—or get you involved,” Nick told her.

But she was already involved. She was his wife and this was where the words for better or for worse came into play.

Had she failed Peter?

She couldn’t think about that now. If she let herself get mired in guilt, she wouldn’t be of any use to Andy and right now, he was her top priority.

Replaying the detective’s words in her head, Suzy suddenly realized something. With a now fresher-smelling Andy in her arms, she turned to look at the man who’d forced her into all this introspection.

“I take it that by saying that, you no longer find me to be a—how do they put it?” she asked, searching for the right terms. “A person of interest?” she recalled.

He wouldn’t exactly say that, Nick thought. Not by a long shot. But since he didn’t mean the phrase the same way she meant it, he refrained from making a direct comment on her question.

Even if he did find her person to be of interest.

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