In Self Defense

by Debra Webb

  “How could I not? Louis Jr. spilled his guts and you got the exclusive? How often does that happen?”

  “I was in the right place at the right time,” Audrey said. She looked around the office. The words were truer than she’d realized when she came home six months ago. This was the right place. The timing was spot-on, as well. She was smarter, stronger. Seeing the world and ferreting out the big stories were enormous accomplishments. But everything led her back home. To put to rest the past...and to be close to her mom.

  Now she could relax and just be.

  “Well, I wanted to congratulate you and remind you that you always have a place here if you decide to return to DC.”

  Audrey appreciated the offer. She’d had about a dozen already in the past week. But that was the way of things. One big story could make or break a career. “Thanks, Ron. I’ll keep that in mind. For now, I’m very happy right here at home.”

  Home. She liked the sound of that.

  “I hear every publishing house in New York has reached out to get your story. What’re they calling it? Old Bones?”

  “If I decide to do the story, you’ll be the first to hear about it.”

  “An interview would be nice.”

  After another assurance he would hear from her before anyone else, the call ended. Audrey glanced around at the dozen or so flower arrangements that had been delivered from former colleagues and one very special person. She touched the petals of a pink tulip amid the huge bunch in the glass vase that sat in the center of her desk. The tulips were from Colt. The card reminded her that he owed her a dinner.

  She’d meant to call and thank him yesterday when the flowers arrived, but she’d been on her way out the door. Audrey had taken her mom for a ride to see how the trees had budded and bloomed. They’d had a perfect day. Mary Jo hadn’t gotten confused or forgotten who Audrey was even once. She’d been her old self. They had spoken about Torrino and how that was over. There was no longer anyone buried in the basement. Audrey had explained how the DA had concluded Mary Jo’s actions were in self-defense. The most important part was that her mom had understood. She had nodded and said she was glad that awful nightmare was finally over.

  Audrey walked back out onto the landing to watch the children below in the lobby. The tiniest catch of yearning tugged at her. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Rey,” she chastised.

  As if fate wanted to remind her that a child had changed her life forever, Key Tanner came into view. He crouched down next to one of the kids and appeared to explain what the little girl was seeing on the other side of the glass wall. Something about the printing presses. A week ago one of Key’s friends had been badly injured in an accident where the teenage driver had been drinking. Everyone had survived and would be okay, but the accident had been a serious wake-up call for Colt’s son. He’d apologized to his father and started volunteering for all the projects possible at school to occupy his time rather than partying every available minute.

  Audrey was grateful to see the change. Colt wanted his son to be safe and happy. What parent wouldn’t?

  As he stood, Key glanced up. He spotted Audrey and waved. His smile was so like his father’s. Truth be told, he was the spitting image of his father at that age. Audrey waved back.

  As many times as Colt had apologized for what happened all those years ago, she understood that he could never regret that beautiful young man currently ushering third graders around the lobby. She didn’t want him to regret his son. Really, what was the point of regretting anything about the decisions they had made in high school, good or bad?

  This wasn’t high school anymore. It was time to put that part of the past to bed once and for all. One never knew when everything could change. Sarah Sauder likely never expected to be whisked away to some unknown place with a new name and no possibility of ever seeing her father and brothers again. Her life would never be the same, but at least they would all be safe.

  Audrey’s father’s heart had given out on him during the strain of that tragic night twenty-four years ago. Today her mom resided in a memory care unit because her mind was failing her...her brain refused to work logically and accurately. Audrey didn’t want to waste a moment more of her life.

  A door at the main entrance opened and Colt walked in. He paused just inside and removed his hat, the way a true gentleman would. A smile stretched across her face and her heart thumped a few extra beats. Hat against his chest, Colt looked up, his gaze captured hers, and he smiled.

  Inside, Audrey melted. She held on to the railing to prevent running to him. As she watched, he strode across the lobby, pausing only long enough to give his son a nod before climbing the stairs.

  Each step closer made breathing a little more difficult. It was foolish, she knew. She was thirty-six years old. He was her first lover, but certainly not her only lover. And yet right now she felt as giddy as a virgin anticipating her first kiss.

  “Morning, Rey.”

  Her pulse reacted to the deep, smooth sound of his voice. She steadied herself. “Morning, Colt.” She stared down at the students scurrying around below. “Your son is doing a terrific job with the kids.”

  “I wish I could take all the credit, but I heard someone visited his school and talked about the growing incidence of tragic accidents among reckless teenagers.”

  “I might have given some pretty gruesome details in that talk to the senior class.”

  “I’m glad you did. I could spout the same statistics all day long and he wouldn’t listen to me. Coming from you, he paid attention. The whole class was impressed.”

  Audrey waved off the idea. “That’s only because I was on Good Morning America day before yesterday.”

  He grinned. “That might have had something to do with it.”

  GMA had asked her to do a spot related to the Cicero case. She’d flown up to New York one day and flown back the next. She’d been exhausted when she made it home that night, but she’d had to be up bright and early the next morning for her Career Day chat with the senior class at Winchester High School. The trip hadn’t exactly been glamorous, but new online and paper subscriptions for the Gazette were up 200 percent. Brian was ecstatic. And the senior class had been duly impressed.

  Colt frowned. “I guess you heard the news about Mr. DuPont.”

  Audrey’s shoulders slumped. “I did. How awful for Rowan. And what a loss for the community. Brian’s putting together a huge spread in memory of him.”

  Edward DuPont, the owner of DuPont Funeral Home, had been murdered in his daughter’s home up in Nashville, ninety miles north of Winchester. It was a terrible tragedy.

  “Billy told me Rowan’s coming home to stay. She’s taking over the funeral home.”

  “Really? I hadn’t heard that part.” Rowan DuPont’s family had operated that funeral home for several generations, the same as the Andersons had with the newspaper. The paper and the funeral home were started by founders of Winchester. Though she and Rowan had never been close, they clearly had a great deal in common. Winchester was a small town; everyone knew everyone else. Rowan had left for college and made a life for herself in Nashville as Audrey had entered high school. Rowan was a celebrated author and she’d worked with Metro Nashville PD for years as an adviser. Like Audrey, she knew her way around a crime scene.

  “My daddy said Rowan and her sister learned how to prep a body for viewing and burial before they were old enough to drive,” Colt noted. “I guess it makes sense that she’d want to take over for him now.”

  “I can understand how she might.” Audrey had basically followed in her father’s footsteps—even if a little belatedly.

  The DuPonts had some very dark tragedies in their history, too. Raven, Rowan’s twin sister, had drowned when she was twelve and her mother had committed suicide a few months later. Audrey’s friend Sasha Lenoir had a haunted history as well. Sasha’s father mu
rdered her mother and then killed himself when Sasha was just a kid. How was it the three of them, Audrey, Sasha and Rowan, could all have such darkness in their pasts and have grown up in the same small town?

  Life was strange.

  “I was hoping you might be able to take off a little early and go to a late lunch,” Colt said, drawing her from the dark thoughts.

  She eyed him, feigning suspicion. “How do you know I haven’t already had lunch?”

  He shrugged. “I might have a source in the paper.”

  Brian. Audrey laughed. “So he told you I’d been too busy for lunch today, did he?”

  “He might have mentioned it.”

  She shook her head. “Lunch sounds great. Let me get my phone and purse.”

  Colt followed her into her office. “You know, I was thinking, spring break is coming up next month and the seniors are taking a class trip. I’ve got a whole slew of vacation days built up and with Key gone...” He shrugged. “Maybe we could get away for a few days.”

  Colt looked more nervous than she’d seen him since he was fifteen and asked her mom for Audrey’s hand in marriage. He’d explained his entire life plan for the two of them to her mom that day.

  “Now that’s a tempting offer, Sheriff.” She moved around to the front of her desk and stared up into his eyes. “If you’re sure that’s what you want to do.”

  It was in that moment, staring into his gorgeous gray eyes, that she realized she had just recalled the memory of him informing her mom of his intentions and hadn’t even thought about what happened later, when they were seniors. Maybe the past was finally, completely behind her.

  And the future was looking brighter all the time.

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.” He tossed his hat onto her desk and took her face in his hands. “I have loved you since I was five years old, Rey, and I want to spend the rest of my life showing you just how much.”

  Her lips trembled and she wanted to kick herself for being so emotional as a tear slid down her cheek. But she decided she didn’t care. “I’m glad to hear it, because I would hate to be in love with you all by myself.”

  He kissed her and he stopped all too quickly, but the sweetness and the sincerity in that brief kiss were all the assurance she needed to know that they were in this together.

  Loud clapping echoed in the lobby.

  They jumped apart, remembering the crowd downstairs. Colt’s son was clapping. As they watched, Brian joined him. Then the students and their teachers.

  Key gave his father a thumbs-up and Audrey relaxed. If they had his son’s blessing, they had nothing else in the world to worry about.

  “Let’s go to lunch.” Colt grabbed his hat. “We’ll finish this in my truck someplace where we won’t be interrupted.” He offered her his hand.

  Audrey put her hand in his, ready to follow him toward the rest of their lives.

  * * *

  Coming next month watch for another

  Winchester, Tennessee Thriller,

  In the Dark Woods,

  from Debra Webb and Harlequin Intrigue.

  Can’t get enough of Winchester, Tennessee?

  Read on for a sneak peek at

  Debra Webb’s new series for MIRA Books,

  The Undertaker’s Daughter!

  Book one, The Secrets We Bury,

  coming in May!

  We hope you enjoyed this Harlequin Intrigue story.

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  The Secrets We Bury

  by Debra Webb

  Mothers shouldn’t die this close to Mother’s Day.

  Especially mothers whose daughters, despite being grown and having families of their own, still considered Mom to be their best friend. Rowan DuPont had spent the better part of last night consoling the daughters of Geneva Phillips. Geneva had failed to show at church on Sunday morning, and later that same afternoon she wasn’t answering her cell. Her youngest daughter had entered her mother’s home to check on her and found Geneva deceased in the bathtub.

  Now the seventy-two-year-old woman’s body waited in refrigeration for Rowan to begin the preparations for her final journey. The viewing wasn’t until tomorrow evening so there was no particular rush. The husband of one of the daughters was away on business in London and wouldn’t arrive back home until late today. There was time for a short break, which had turned into a morning drive that took Rowan across town and to a place she hadn’t visited in better than two decades.

  Like death, some things were inevitable. Coming back to this place was one of those things. Perhaps it was the hours spent with the sisters last night that had prompted memories of Rowan’s own sister. She and her twin had once been inseparable. Wasn’t that generally the way with identical twins?

  The breeze shifted, lifting a wisp of hair across her face. Rowan swiped it away and stared out over Tims Ford Lake. The dark, murky waters spread like sprawling arms some thirty-odd miles upstream from the nearby dam, enveloping the treacherous Elk River in its embrace. The water was deep and unforgiving. Even standing on the bank, at least ten feet from the edge, a chill crept up Rowan’s spine. She hated this place. Hated the water. The ripples that broke the shadowy surface...the smell of fish and rotting plant life. She hated every little thing about it.

  This was the spot where her sister’s body had been found.

  July 6, twenty-seven years ago. Rowan and her twin sister, Raven, had turned twelve years old that spring. Rowan’s gaze lingered on the decaying tree trunk and the cluster of newer branches and overgrowth stretching from the bank into the hungry water where her sister’s lifeless body had snagged. The current had dragged her pale, thin body a good distance before depositing her at this spot. It had taken eight hours and twenty-three minutes for the search teams to find her.

  Rowan had known her sister was dead before the call had come that Raven had gone missing. Her parents had rushed to help with the search, leaving a neighbor with Rowan. She had stood at her bedroom window watching for their return. The house had felt completely empty and Rowan had understood that her life would never be the same.

  No matter that nearly three decades had passed since that sultry summer day; she could still recall the horrifying feel of the final tug, and then the ominous release of her sister’s physical presence.

  She shifted her gaze from the water to the sky. Last night the temperature had taken an unseasonable plunge. Blackberry winter, the locals called it. Whether it held some glimmer of basis in botany or was merely rooted in folklore, blackberry bushes all over the county were in full bloom. Rowan pulled her sweater tight around her. Though today was the first time she had come to this place since returning home from Nashville, the dark water was never far from her thoughts. How could it be
? The lake swelled and withdrew around Winchester like the rhythmic breath of a sleeping giant, at once harmless and menacing.

  Rowan had sneaked away to this spot dozens of times after her sister was buried. Other times she had ridden her bike to the cemetery and visited her there or simply sat in Raven’s room and stared at the bed where she had once laid her head. But Rowan felt closest to her sister here, near the water that had snatched her life away like the merciless talons of a hawk descending on a fleeing field mouse.

  “You should have stayed home,” Rowan murmured to herself. The ache, no matter the many years that had passed, twisted in her chest.

  She had begged Raven not to go to the party. Her sister had been convinced that Rowan’s behavior was nothing more than jealousy since she hadn’t been invited. The suggestion hadn’t been entirely unjustified, but mostly Rowan had felt a smothering dread, a panic that had bordered on hysteria. She had needed her sister to stay home. Every adolescent instinct she possessed had been screaming and restless with that looming sense of trepidation.

  But Raven had ignored her sister’s pleas and attended the big barbecue and swim party with her best friend, Tessa Cardwell. Raven DuPont died that day and Rowan had spent all the years since wondering what else she could have done differently to change that outcome.

  Nothing. She could not rewrite history any more than she had been able to change her sister’s mind.

  Rowan exhaled a beleaguered breath. At moments like this she felt exactly as if her life was moving backward. She’d enjoyed a fulfilling career with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department as an adviser for the special crimes unit. As a psychiatrist, she had found her work immensely satisfying and she had helped to solve numerous homicide cases. But then, not quite two months ago, everything had changed. The one case that Rowan didn’t recognize had been happening right in front of her, shattering her life...and sending everything spiraling out of control.