“You sound like you’re looking forward to that.”
Seneca laughed hard. “I most certainly am.”
* * *
Jackson let the strain in his muscles settle as he used the shovel to clean out the stalls. He’d spent part of the morning checking on the construction crew. They were moving ahead of Aja’s original schedule. The job would be complete within the next two months.
The news they’d beaten the cold-weather deadline would give Aja something to celebrate. After Seneca was drugged, the ranch had taken on a morose and somber tone. There wasn’t much laughter, and Aja seemed determined to work herself to death. The news that her buildings were on the verge of being finished and she could open the ranch as a resort should put a welcomed spark back in her eyes.
He missed that. The way her eyes lit up when she was happy or amused with something. It was the reason he made it a point to take care of her every night when they went to bed. She was emotionally weary when she walked into the bedroom. As if she’d lost all hope that life could be good again.
He didn’t know how to help her find her hope. So he held her and cherished her and let her know he was there for her in whatever way she needed until he could figure out something better to do.
He finished up in the stables, brought the horses back in, and stopped to stare at Aja’s horse before leaving. “Shadow, what are we going to do about our girl?” When the horse gave his head a wayward bob, Jackson smiled and ran his hand down its long, dark muzzle. The horse tolerated Jackson on most occasions. But today, he seemed to sympathize with him over the woman they both cared about. “I know, boy. I’m worried about her too.”
Jackson gave the horse’s muzzle one more rub, then headed outside the stables. The first thing he noticed was the group of three people walking toward him. Aja, Colton, and Storm closed the short distance, his men greeting him with a handshake when they were closer.
“Look what the cat dragged in.”
“I was wondering when you’d make it out.”
“A body can’t spend a weekend with su madre in Mexico without all hell breaking loose here.” Storm shook his head, then waved a large envelope in front of Jackson. “We picked up Seneca’s medical records before coming here. Gleason and Jennings have already been interviewing the guests from the party.”
Aja turned to him, her brow furrowed in confusion. “You didn’t know about this?”
Jackson shook his head. “I’m officially on leave for another week. Also, considering the sheriff’s mistreatment of your case, I didn’t trust him not to muck up Seneca’s case too.”
“Is our cover still intact?” Colton’s question was directed at Aja.
“As far as I know. I never told Seneca and Brooklyn who you three really were. I didn’t want to hurt them by revealing my dishonesty. Did you mention anything, Jackson?”
He shook his head. “No. Do you know if your aunt or uncle did?”
“I doubt it, but I’ll ask all the same. Why?”
Storm removed his hat and ran fingers through the dark waves atop his head. “We have concerns that this could be Bennett reaching out beyond his cell to control things on the outside. If people think we’re ranch hands instead of investigators, it may give us a better chance at figuring this out.”
Aja took a deep breath as the signs of emotional fatigue and worry hung heavy on her shoulders. “Come on in. I left my cell at the house, but there’s a landline in the stables. I’ll call them both to make sure.”
Jackson was about to follow the three of them inside the stables when his cell phone vibrated in his back pocket. A quick glance at the screen brought a smile to his face.
“Holden, you must’ve known I planned to call and cuss you out.”
Holden’s robust laughter reverberated through the phone. “I take it you found out about my mom and your dad?”
“So you have known along with the rest of my family. I get Kip being an asshole and keeping the info from me. He’s my kid brother, so he’s supposed to make my life hell. But I expected more from you. You, me, and Colt have been friends more years than I can count. Why wouldn’t you tell me?”
“You weren’t ready to know.” Jackson allowed those words to linger in his subconscious as silence filled the line. “I figured it out around the time things got bad with your ex. I didn’t think you’d take it well. And to be honest, as tight as we’ve been, if you’d said one thing out of place about my mama, I wouldn’t have cared about your state of mind. Keeping it to myself kept our friendship intact.”
Jackson silently agreed. He couldn’t deny how miserable he had been back then. “You’re correct. I wasn’t in my right mind. It wouldn’t have gone well.”
“As I live and breathe. Is that Jackson Dean admitting he was a mean cuss, angry at the entire world?”
Jackson couldn’t get upset at the ribbing. It was true. “Things were bad for a long time. But they’re getting better now. I might not think marriage is an option for me, but your mama and my daddy seem to be happy together. I know Ms. Eames has always been good to us. She’s a fine woman, and I wish them the best. So all’s well on this end. What’s up with you? Anything interesting going on in New York?”
Holden cleared his throat. “Actually, I finally got ahold of some of that information you asked me for about one Aja Everett.”
Jackson’s gut tightened. “What did you find?”
“Nothing on her specifically. She has no priors. According to her record, she’s been a stand-up citizen. Worked her way through school, climbed her way up the legal ladder at her firm, busted her ass getting celebrities and one-percenters off the legal hook for a lot of years.”
All of that jibed with what he’d discovered about Aja through his own investigation and through the close nature of their relationship. “So what’s the issue?”
“There’s a client she had. A Drucilla Everett. According to her death certificate, she and Aja were sisters.”
“Death certificate? How’d she die?”
“Official cause of death is blunt-force trauma to the head. I have a few contacts at Brooklyn holding. Apparently there was some kind of dustup between Drucilla and another detainee that led to Drucilla getting her head smashed against a wall.”
“Damn.”
“I know, but after reading her rap sheet, her manner of death isn’t surprising. Unlike Aja, Drucilla never seemed to meet trouble she didn’t want to get into. She’d been in and out of court, went to juvie for a few months when she was sixteen. She also did a four-year bid in Rikers as an adult. From the time she was released, any legal trouble she got into, Aja got her out of. It wouldn’t be surprising if some of her sister’s trouble found a way of messing with Aja’s life. If you’re still working the case, maybe that might be a new angle to look at.”
“Maybe. Thanks for the info. I owe you a beer the next time you’re in town.”
“I will certainly hold you to that.”
Jackson ended the call, processing all the things Holden had shared with him. He’d shared the darkest parts of his life with her. Why hadn’t she told him about her sister? Wasn’t that what people who were intimate with each other were supposed to do?
“What are you hiding, Aja?”
Chapter 40
Aja watched in delight as Shadow took the offered apple she held up to him. “You’re such a happy boy, aren’t you?” She rubbed his shiny black mane and laughed when he used his head to butt her hand again. “You want another one?” She grabbed another apple and held it in front of him. “You’re lucky I like you.”
“Any man that grabs your favor is a fortunate man.”
She turned to see Jackson walking toward her. “You searching for treats too? Don’t worry. I might just have a pineapple coconut cake waiting for you in the fridge.”
The smile on his face drooped slightly, and concer
n tingled somewhere in the back of her mind. “What, you don’t like my pineapple coconut cake all of a sudden? Everything okay?”
“I don’t really know how to say things any other way than direct. I’d love a slice of your cake, but I don’t know if you’ll still want to share it with me once you hear what I have to say. Are we alone?”
She placed her hands on her waist and straightened her shoulders, preparing for whatever blow he would land. “Colton and Storm went up to the main house. Speak your piece.”
He spread his arms wide. “Tell me about Drucilla.”
The floor of her stomach plummeted, making her want to reach for a nearby wood panel to keep herself upright. But she couldn’t. To react that way would show weakness, and if Jackson smelled blood in the water, he wouldn’t relent until he knew all her secrets.
“Where did you hear that name?”
“Not from you,” he answered softly.
She let out a heavy sigh. “I hope you’re not suggesting that because we’re sleeping together I owe you passage into my past? Because if that’s what you’re thinking, you’re wrong.”
He shook his head, keeping his features even and mellow. “I don’t think you owe me anything. I’d simply hoped that after everything that’s happened, you knew you could trust me.”
“Trust you? You call rummaging around in my past an example of trust?”
He held up his hands. “I didn’t rummage into your life. After you were attacked, I was desperate to put your assailant behind bars. So I reached out to a friend of mine in the FBI who’s a field agent in New York. I thought perhaps there was a disgruntled client in your past who might have been responsible for the attack and the vandalism.”
She chuckled. It was a low, heavy sound that had nothing to do with amusement and everything to do with her rising anger. “I don’t have any disgruntled clients. I kept rich people out of jail for a long time. My clients loved me, and I’ve got so much dirt on them, they’d never dare to cross me.”
“Yeah, but Drucilla wasn’t like your other clients, was she? She wasn’t a rich blue blood or shiny star.”
The mere mention of her sister’s name pulled her back into the black hole that period of her life represented. Her chest tightened, and unshed tears burned her eyes.
“No, she wasn’t. Dru was a selfish, self-centered train wreck who did everything in her power to ruin me and her, and I had no choice but to sit by and watch her wreak havoc on both our lives.”
Her throat felt tight, regret weighing heavy on her chest. I’m so tired of carrying this, so tired of trying to pretend I’m someone I’m not. She closed her eyes, resolving it was finally time to come clean. She pressed her lids as tightly as she could, trying to dam the river of tears behind them. But just like always, her strength wasn’t enough to fight her guilt. It’s time, Aja. She blew out a steadying breath while the hot stream of tears scorched her skin as they descended her face. “Dru loved trouble. And as a result, it meant she and our mom butted heads all the time. Mama was a country girl, and the only way she knew how to keep us on the straight and narrow was to be strict. The boundaries she set worked for me. But for Dru, they only seemed to encourage her mischief more.
“She’d get in trouble, Mama would lose it, and I would get caught in the middle as the mediator. And sometimes, when I just didn’t feel like being put in the middle, I’d cover for Dru so Mama wouldn’t know what she was up to. After a while, I was lying for her all the time. She was my sister. I was supposed to keep her secrets. How could I tell on her? But then Dru fell in with the wrong crowd and ended up in juvie.
“When she came home, I hoped being put away had scared her straight. But it didn’t. She did more and more stupid stuff and expected me to have her back every time. And just like she knew I would, I did.”
She wiped the fresh stream of tears that came and moved away from Shadow’s stall. Animals could sense pain, and if she kept going, Shadow would probably kick his stall door down to get to her.
“Things got worse between her and mama too. She even accused me of kissing up to our mother so she always looked bad in Mama’s eyes. I did everything to get her to understand how foolish she was being, but nothing worked. No matter what I did, even when I was covering for her—and especially as I accomplished my academic goals or graduated from law school—she seemed to hate me more.
“I tried to support her, to encourage her. Especially once our mother died. I’d pay for her to sign up for courses, and she’d take the money and use it on something else. I’d set her up with a job, but she’d never show up. Nothing I said or did could get her to clean up her act. Even though she was an adult by then, she still found the wrong people to be around, still wound up doing shit she had no business doing, and just like before, she wound up in serious trouble. This time, she landed herself in Rikers for four years. And when she came out doing the same shit all over again, I finally washed my hands. I couldn’t risk my career to keep trying to save someone that didn’t want to be saved.”
She began to pace, hoping the back-and-forth motion would somehow push down the panic of all those years that was trying to climb through her chest and into the moment they were sharing.
Her tears started falling faster as the memory of what came next climbed toward the front of her mind. Seeing her distress, Jackson moved closer to her, standing in her path so she couldn’t pace anymore. Once she stopped, he lifted the pad of his thumb and wiped away her tears.
“What happened, Aja?”
She swallowed, but the grief was choking her, making it hard to talk. If you’ve come this far, you need to go ahead and finish it. Tell the truth and shame the devil.
“One day, it all came to a head. She got picked up for smoking weed in a park. Thinking back on it, it was something so petty, so small, it wouldn’t have taken much to get her out of trouble. But I was in the middle of dealing with a VIP client at the firm. If I left, I would’ve lost millions for my firm. I couldn’t leave. So when she called, I told her she’d have to wait. That my career was literally on the line. She didn’t want to hear that. It was a Friday, and she didn’t want to get stuck in lockup over the weekend.
“She was being so unreasonable and selfish, and she refused to cut me any slack. So to appease her, I told her I was coming, when I knew wasn’t.
“The next day as I prepared to go see her, I got a call from the holding facility saying there’d been an altercation with another detainee, and the result was my sister was dead. It happened two hours before that call. If I’d gotten her out the night before, she would still be alive.”
Jackson’s hands moved down her shoulders until they were around her waist, pulling her into his warmth and safety. But the guilt was stronger tonight, yelling she wasn’t worthy of his comfort. It refused to let her focus on the steady security of his grip. It crowded her thoughts and her heart until she could hardly hear anything but the gloomy, persistent voice inside her head.
“Baby, I wish you would’ve told me this. Not that you owed it to me. I can’t believe you’ve walked around carrying this for so long by yourself.”
“Jackson, you were an unexpected tornado that blew into my life. I was resistant when you arrived, but once you were here, I was so glad.”
She turned in his arms, looking up at him, her heart slicing into a million tiny pieces when she witnessed the familiar swell of confusion and despair in his eyes she’d witnessed in so many others over the years.
“You were the first person in a long time who didn’t look at me with a mix of pity and disgust. My aunt and uncle love me, but sometimes I can see the weight of loss in their eyes and it kills me. Seneca and Brooklyn always seem to look at me as though I’m broken. As if they can always tell when my guilt is riding high and my sister is haunting my dreams. You didn’t look at me like that. And a small, selfish part of me latched onto that and didn’t want to let it go.<
br />
“I wanted to be someone you desired and respected, not the woman with the tragic past you have to handle with kid gloves.”
He shook his head. “I never would have treated you that way. This never would have changed things between us.”
She could tell by the way he squeezed her tighter to him, he wanted to believe that. She wanted to lean her head against his chest and believe it too. But the truth was out there now, and neither of them could pretend it hadn’t been spoken.
“You are a good man, Jackson. The best I’ve ever met. You can tolerate a lot of things, but lying isn’t one of them. A lie of omission is still a lie. The lawman in you can never look beyond the fact I chose pettiness and professional advancement over family, and it cost Dru her life. I didn’t want you to know anything for all the reasons I stated, and this one most of all. I didn’t want to fall from the pedestal you placed me on. It felt good for someone to believe in how good I could be, even when I knew guilt sullied my past. Now, it’s all ruined because you had to go digging into my yesterdays. I hope it was worth it.”
* * *
Jackson stood in the middle of the stables, unsure what had just happened. He knew it was something bad, but he hadn’t been prepared for it. Even worse, he hadn’t been prepared to stop it.
He stood there combing through every moment of their interactions together. Everything she ever said to him focused on comfort and making it through struggles without losing your hold on life. He thought she was talking about hypothetical, metaphorical situations. It never occurred to him she’d been talking about herself.
“Dammit, how has she carried this all this time?”
It was the thought of her towing this trough of emotional baggage that spurred him into action. She’d left him inside the barn, but to him, her exit felt far more permanent than he ever wanted it to be.
Jackson Page 29
