Before We Were Strangers

by Brenda Novak

  A vengeful Paige was difficult to deal with, but a pleading Paige was somehow worse. “I’m sorry. It has never been my intention to hurt you.”

  “That’s it?” she said. “I bare my heart and soul to you, and you say you’re sorry?”

  “You need to stop,” he replied. “We can’t keep going through this. It’s over between us. For good.” Maybe if he said it enough, she’d give up. He’d never met anyone as tenacious as she was.

  “Sometimes I hate you as much as I love you,” she snapped and started to march back to her car. But before he could close the door, her steps slowed and she turned. “Will you do me one favor?” she asked. “After all we’ve been through?”

  What was coming now? “If I can,” he replied.

  “Don’t get back together with Sloane.”

  He raked his fingers through his hair. “Paige—”

  “Please?” she broke in. “I couldn’t bear to watch. I’m not asking this to deny you anything. It’s that I love her, too. Don’t you see? She was my best friend, and I now have a chance at rebuilding that relationship. So if you can’t love me, at least let me have her love.”

  He hesitated. What in God’s name was he supposed to say to this? Did she understand how much he loved Sloane? How much he’d always loved her?

  Did it matter?

  Not if Sloane was leaving. It wasn’t as if he could ever talk her into staying. She’d made that clear, so he figured he might as well give Paige the reassurance she craved. “You don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “Couldn’t you put a little conviction behind that?”

  “She’s leaving, Paige.” He could tell she expected a promise of some sort. But he also knew that wasn’t a promise he could give, because if he could change Sloane’s mind, he would. “You need to move on. You don’t believe me, but I want you to be happy. I always have.”

  “Right. That’s why you’ve made me so miserable,” she grumbled.

  “That was never my intention.”

  She shook her head as she walked away, and he remained at the door, watching to be sure she drove off.

  A few seconds after he went back inside, Sloane came around the corner. “I’m sorry for putting you in such a bad situation. I’ll get dressed so you can take me to the motel. I’ll call her from there so she won’t worry.”

  He caught her by the arm. “You’ll have to call her later.”

  Her eyes widened. “Why?”

  “Because I can’t take you back to the motel. It’s not safe there. That’s why I didn’t take you last night.”

  A confused expression claimed her face. “I don’t understand...”

  Letting go, he rubbed a hand over his beard growth. “This won’t be an easy conversation. So let me shower and shave before I explain, okay?”

  Her normally smooth forehead creased. “This is what you wanted to tell me last night.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s about my father.”

  He nodded. “There’s been a new development.”

  “Okay. So are we not going to talk about what just happened with Paige?”

  He let his breath seep out in a long sigh. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “She’s still hoping to get you back.”

  “I’m not going back,” he said. “Believe me, if I could’ve made it work, I would have.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Sloane dressed in what she’d worn the night before; it was all she had. Then she made Micah’s bed. The water went off while she was folding the T-shirt he’d loaned her, so she knew he’d be getting out of the shower soon. What was he about to tell her?

  She was afraid to find out, but she was also filled with hope that she might finally get some answers. Had Micah uncovered something that proved her father either guilty or innocent?

  She was cleaning up in the kitchen when Micah came out wearing a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt with no shoes, his hair still wet. He poured himself a fresh cup of coffee but when he offered her one, she refused. She was jittery enough, didn’t need the caffeine.

  “Have a seat.” He gestured at the kitchen table before taking the opposite chair.

  “This feels serious,” she said. “What’s going on?”

  He took a moment, as if it was serious, and he was trying to decide where to start. “Growing up, what did you hear about your grandparents on your father’s side?”

  “Not a lot. My dad didn’t talk much about his parents.”

  He looked into his coffee cup, obviously tempted to take a sip, but there was still a curl of steam coming off it. “He didn’t say anything?”

  She searched her memory for various tidbits she’d picked up over the years. Her grandparents had never been part of her life, so she hadn’t thought a great deal about them, had never asked questions, especially once she learned the story of how they’d died. She’d feared those questions would be too painful for her father to hear, hadn’t wanted to make him relive such a terrible ordeal. “They bought my dad a brand-new Corvette on his sixteenth birthday, so I guess that says they were rich and he was privileged, to a degree.”

  “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. He’s still privileged. But he’s liked Corvettes for that long?”

  “From the beginning. He wrecked that first one after only a few days, though. That was the reason he refused to give me and Randy a car even though he could easily have done it, what with the dealership and all. Instead, he made us share an old Volvo he picked up at an auto auction.”

  Micah took a careful sip of his coffee. “That’s it? That’s all you know?”

  She turned the saltshaker in a circle. “Not all but close. His father worked hard and was gone a lot. His mother was a stay-at-home mom who volunteered at the school. That’s why my father was so adamant my mother do the same—stay home and take care of us, help out in our classrooms, that sort of thing. Which is ironic, since she fell in love with one of my teachers.”

  “Did you get the impression your father was close to his parents? That they were nurturing, loving?”

  She continued to turn the saltshaker. “Tough to say. He didn’t complain about them, but neither did he speak fondly of them. It was more like they never existed in the first place. Unless my father recalled something from his past that changed how he was going to handle the same sort of issue in the present, he never brought up his childhood.”

  “Give me an example. You mean like the car thing?”

  “Yeah. His parents bought him a car when he was only sixteen, but that didn’t work out. In his mind he was too young. So he wasn’t going to make the same mistake. We would get a car but only after we were older and had graduated from high school—not that I stuck around long enough for that.”

  “You were only days away from getting it. I remember going with you to pick it out. So why didn’t you wait? You could’ve taken it with you. At least you would’ve had an asset you could use or sell, something with which to go out into the world. You didn’t have to leave on a bus with next to nothing.”

  “Didn’t seem right to take it. That wasn’t the kind of person I wanted to be. Anyway, Randy and I were another example of my father bringing up his past but only because it related to the present.”

  “You and Randy?”

  “He often mentioned he was glad we weren’t the same sex. He said that way we wouldn’t compete with each other.”

  “Was there a lot of sibling rivalry between him and his brother?”

  “He claimed Sterling tried to outdo him in everything.” She pushed the saltshaker against the wall, where she’d found it, and clasped her hands in her lap to hold them still. “But who knows if it was all Sterling’s fault. My father is so competitive. He has to win at everything. I remember how hard he would play against Randy on the basketball court when Randy was only sixteen. He
had to prove he was superior, couldn’t ever let Randy feel as though he stood a chance against him.” She grimaced as she remembered the disgust she’d felt watching. “It was annoying to see a full-grown man do that to a boy, made me defensive of my brother. I was even younger than Randy and yet I knew there was something ungenerous about his behavior, even unkind. But Randy didn’t seem to notice. He’s always worshipped the ground our father walks on.”

  Micah made a clicking sound with his mouth. “Your father has such a big ego.”

  “The biggest,” she agreed. “The man I knew could never allow anyone else to be in the limelight.”

  “And you believe that extended to his brother.”

  “I’m almost positive of it. He was jealous of Sterling. When Randy asked to play water polo in high school, my father instantly refused. He said Sterling used to play, that he never wanted to see another water polo match as long as he lived. I thought it was because the game reminded him of his brother, but the longer he talked, the more I realized it had nothing to do with Sterling. He hated going to the matches because they weren’t all about him. He wasn’t on the team, wasn’t the focus of the event. He said something like, ‘My father didn’t understand that I had better things to do than sit there, worshipping the baby of the family like they did.’”

  Micah stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankle. “He said ‘worshipping’?”

  “He did. It struck me as odd, too, which is why it has stuck with me for so long.”

  “Sterling must’ve been a good player.”

  “He was better than good. When we were watching the Olympics one day, my dad mentioned that, had Sterling lived, he probably would’ve made the team.”

  Micah stared into his cup for several long seconds before he spoke again. “That’s interesting.”

  “Why?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he posed another question. “Did your father seem particularly upset whenever he talked about the deaths in his family?”

  “Not especially. But he’d lost them years before, when he was only twenty-two. By the time Randy and I came along and were able to have that type of discussion, I supposed he’d already dealt with his grief, grown accustomed to the reality. It wasn’t as if the man who’d shot them wasn’t caught, wasn’t as though he couldn’t close the door on that chapter of his life because he had to worry about the guy who killed his family being out on the streets.”

  Micah put his elbows on the table and leaned forward again. “The guy was caught but never tried, right?”

  She racked her brain but couldn’t recall ever hearing that. “I don’t know.”

  “He hung himself in his cell before the case could even go to trial.”

  She hated the mental image those words created even though she couldn’t sympathize, given what he’d done to her grandparents and uncle. “Randy once asked if the guy was in prison and my dad said he was dead. He didn’t elaborate, probably because we were just children. But how does whether he went to trial change anything?”

  “The police never really had the chance to press him, to see if anyone else was involved.”

  She scratched her neck. “They thought there might be someone else?”

  “Yes. The house wasn’t tossed. And the man who killed them knew right where the valuables were, didn’t waste any time searching.”

  “Maybe my grandma or grandpa told him where to find everything in an effort to save their own lives—or Sterling’s. That wouldn’t be unusual, would it?”

  “No, but they were shot the second they walked through the door, didn’t have time to say or do anything. And the alarm? It had been disarmed twenty minutes before they arrived.”

  “You’re saying the perpetrator had the code?”

  “He must have.”

  “How?”

  “That’s one of the things the police were planning to ask. Sam—that was the guy’s name, if I remember right: Sam Something—claimed it was never on to begin with, but it was. They proved that via the monitoring service. The alarm actually sounded before the code could be entered, so it called the monitoring service, but then someone disarmed it immediately after, so they didn’t send the police. And only the family or someone close to them would know the code, so...”

  She pressed a hand to her chest. This conversation was drifting into far darker territory than she’d expected. “Wait... You don’t think... I mean... You’re not suggesting...”

  “I’m not suggesting it, no,” Micah said. “But there is a detective in the Keller Police Department—”

  “Keller?” She didn’t recognize the name, didn’t think she’d ever heard it before.

  “It’s a suburb of Fort Worth. The police department there is contracted to cover Westlake, where your father’s parents lived when they were killed. So they were the ones to investigate.”

  She came to her feet. “How’d you learn all of this?”

  “Mostly by chance. I went in to ask Chief Adler for the file on your mother’s disappearance—”

  “You did?” She couldn’t help being sidetracked by this latest revelation. “But I told you not to let anyone know you were remotely involved. You realize you’ll have to live in this town after I’m gone. You need to remain friends with my father, if possible, because even if I’ve found some evidence to suggest he might’ve killed my mother—like Vickie’s sighting of him pulling our boat that night—and could find more, it might never be enough. What if I can’t prove anything? Can’t hold him accountable? He’ll remain in charge, do all he can to make your life miserable! He always gets even with his enemies. I may not know a lot about his early life or his relationship with his family, but I can promise you that much. He can be very vindictive.”

  “Which is why I can’t let you oppose him on your own.”

  “Yes, you can! I don’t want anyone else to be hurt, especially you.”

  He came to his feet, too. “But you don’t know anything about investigating a murder.”

  “Then I’ll hire another private investigator.”

  That took him back; she could tell. “You’ve hired one before?”

  “While I was in New York, as soon as I had the money.”

  “And he couldn’t find anything?”

  “He was trying to locate my mother and came up with nothing. I didn’t ask him to investigate my father.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I wasn’t willing to commit to the idea that my father might really have murdered my mother. I was hoping to come back and be reassured, not shaken to the core. But it hasn’t gone that way, so I have to toughen up and do whatever is necessary. Especially now, considering what you just told me.”

  He held out a beseeching hand. “Sloane, you’re going to need more help than some private detective who doesn’t know anyone. If it’s about your father, people here will only talk to someone they trust. Someone like me.” He pressed a thumb into his chest. “I’m a police officer they’ve seen and know, and I haven’t been gone for a decade.”

  “No! I don’t want you to take that risk.”

  “It’s not up to you.”

  “Then I’m leaving.”

  He caught her arm when she tried to get around him and forced her to turn and look at him. “You should know that Chief Adler is siding with your father. When I asked for your mother’s file, he gave me some crap about having it with him, that he was looking into the case and I shouldn’t worry about it. But I could tell he wasn’t going to do anything with it. So I was pretty pissed off when I walked out. Colt Green, who happened to be sitting outside the chief’s office, overheard part of the conversation. He called me after I left the station to tell me that someone from the Keller Police Department had been in touch a few days ago, asking about the mayor. So I made a few calls and spent some time on the phone with a Detective Ramos. That’s how I fo
und out your father might also be responsible for the slayings of his parents and brother.”

  Sloane had always wondered if jealousy might’ve led her father to harm her mother, but she’d never even considered the possibility that he could be responsible for multiple murders—that he could be a complete psychopath, as he’d almost have to be in order to orchestrate the deaths of his father, mother and brother. Especially at twenty-two! What kind of a young man did that? She had to find out who he really was, but she felt as though she was trying to move a mountain. “He believes my father might’ve...what? Paid the man who shot them?”

  “Yes. For their money. He inherited millions.”

  “He would’ve inherited that money when they died, regardless. He didn’t need to kill them.”

  “True, but he most likely would’ve had to wait years. And he would’ve had to split what he inherited with his brother. There’s also the fact that he was flunking out of school, which surprised me.”

  “Whoa, wait. He was flunking? That can’t be true.”

  “His parents would’ve been shocked, too, had they lived long enough to find out. They thought he was about to graduate. Keeping that information from them could’ve been a secondary motive.”

  “Oh God.” She shook her head. “He claims to have a degree!”

  “That’s a lie. Ramos can tell you that for sure.”

  Sloane sank back in her seat. “I can’t believe this. It’s so much worse than I thought. He’s a pathological liar and a psychopath.”

  Micah knelt in front of her. “There is some circumstantial evidence and a lot of nagging questions about his family’s deaths. But let’s try to keep an open mind. Ramos just took over the case from an older detective who’s retiring. He’s going to take a fresh look. He doesn’t have any solid proof yet.”

  “You have to admit that it’s highly unlikely two such tragic events would happen to the same man. I don’t know why I never considered it before.”

  “It could be a coincidence. Perhaps losing his father, mother and brother in such a horrific way damaged him, made him capable of what he might’ve done to your mother. Don’t take it too hard, not yet. There’re enough red flags that Detective Ramos would like to speak with you. That’s all. If they could’ve connected him with the shooter, things would’ve gone much differently—trust me.”