Because of Him: A Christian Romance (New Hope Falls Book 2)

by Kimberly Rae Jordan

  “Listen, Mom. Can I give you a call when I get home? We can talk more about it then.”

  “Of course, honey. I didn’t mean to bring this all up while you were enjoying some peace and quiet. Just give me a call when you want to talk.”

  “Thanks, Mom. I’ll call you in a little while.”

  They said goodbye, then Kieran ended the call. “Sean was my younger brother. He was killed.”

  Cara focused more fully on him. “I’m sorry to hear that. Was he a cop too?”

  Kieran gave a humorless laugh. “No. He was definitely not a cop. He got caught up with the wrong crowd and was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “That must have been horrible to deal with.”

  “It was. There were only two of us, so suddenly I was an only child. Helping my mom through losing her youngest son was rough. His death nearly ended her life.”

  “I can’t imagine. I don’t think any parent plans to outlive their children.”

  “No, they don’t. That was something my mom said a lot in those early days. That we were supposed to be the ones burying her, not her burying one of us.”

  “I’m sorry this will be a difficult week for you.”

  Kieran’s shoulder slumped a bit. “To be honest, I had kind of forgotten that it was his birthday. I would never tell my mom that, and it’s not because I’ve forgotten him. It had just been a long time since we’d celebrated his birthday with him even before he was killed. We didn’t celebrate if he wasn’t there, and in the years before he passed, he wasn’t around much. I mean, not that we’re celebrating his birthday this week. It’s more about remembrance. Remembering the man he was before he decided to go his own way, making far too many bad decisions in the process.”

  “No one can blame you for not living your life firmly entrenched in the past. It’s a bit different for your mom. I mean, she would remember having given birth to him. She would have memories of how his birth changed her life.”

  Kieran nodded, not saying anything for a moment, but then he glanced at her again. “I hope you’re not upset that I didn’t tell Mom you were with me.”

  Cara reached out to lay her hand on his arm, letting it rest there a moment before tucking it back in the pocket of the hoodie. “I’m not upset at all. In fact, I’m kind of glad. It’s better if it’s just the two of us in this…getting to know each other and things we’ve got going on.”

  She felt relieved when the corner of Kieran’s mouth lifted slightly. “I would agree.”

  “I figure if we end up spending more time together, people will undoubtedly start to weigh in with their thoughts on the situation, so we might as well enjoy the privacy while we can.”

  “I see you’ve figured out how things work in New Hope,” he said with a laugh.

  “Kind of. I’ve heard lots about Eli’s situation, then about him and Anna, not to mention the opinions on a few divorces that have taken place in the time I’ve lived here.”

  “Welcome to New Hope Falls, where your business is everyone’s business.”

  “Is there anything off-limits when it comes to gossip?”

  “Not really. There are some who will share rumors or gossip about everything. Then there are others who won’t gossip about anything. Most fall in the middle, where they might chat about you, but if it were something really serious, they wouldn’t say anything.”

  “I don’t suppose people would do me a favor and wear labels to let me know which one they are.”

  “No, probably not. They wouldn’t see the fun in that, because how would they get you to share your deepest, darkest secrets with them if you think they’ll turn around and share them.”

  Cara thought about her deepest, darkest secrets, and she was confident that she wouldn’t be sharing those with anyone.

  “I think it’s best to just not share those sorts of things until you know a person really well.”

  “Good plan. There are only three people that I can absolutely vouch for not being gossips. One, of course, is me. Another is Eli because he knows how hurtful gossip can be, and he’s said he’d never inflict that on anyone. The final person is Pastor Evans. That man has held a lot of confidences over the years. Ask anyone who’s ever spoken with him, and they’ll tell you that he is a trustworthy holder of secrets.”

  “That’s good since I would assume that would almost be part of his job description.”

  “Yes, it would be,” Kieran agreed.

  She’d spoken to the man for a few minutes after the service, thanking him for his message that day as well as his prayers the previous week. The man’s caring nature had shown through in his gentle smile and warm gaze. She could see why people found it easy to confide in him.

  She didn’t realize that Kieran had turned them around at some point until a sign for New Hope appeared. Though she was disappointed that their time together was ending, at least it was ending on a slightly more upbeat note.

  “Sorry we couldn’t spend more time together, but I think I should drop in and see if Mom’s okay. I’m sure she is, but—”

  “No. Don’t feel you have to explain it to me. In your shoes, I’d want to check in on her too.” When he pulled up behind her building, she reached into her purse and pushed the button to open the garage door as she said, “I’m assuming we’ll have more opportunities to hang out?”

  “Definitely.” He smiled at her, the earlier tension disappearing from his face. “Most definitely.”

  “You’ve got my number.” She pushed open her door. “I look forward to hearing from you.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It was still raining, so Cara darted for the open doorway. Before closing the door, she waved at him one more time, wishing that they were already at the point where a hug and a kiss were part of their goodbyes. She closed the garage door, listening as he drove away. As she turned to disarm the main alarm, she realized she was still wearing his hoodie.

  Cara felt a bit like a teenager as she lifted the edge of it to her nose and sniffed, once again appreciating the whiff of his cologne. She didn’t know the name of it, but its scent lingered as she climbed the stairs to her apartment. It was only as she walked in the door that she realized she hadn’t taken time to look at her cameras, which was something she hadn’t done since she’d moved into the building.

  As much as she enjoyed her time with Kieran, she couldn’t allow herself to become distracted to the point where she didn’t pay attention to her surroundings. Thankfully, this time around, it appeared that nothing had happened while she’d been out.

  She wandered over to the window and stared out at the gray clouds hanging low over the town. A shiver went through her as she watched raindrops slide down the glass. As the sky continued to darken, shadows crept into the apartment. Moving through the room, Cara snapped on a couple of lamps, providing just enough light to keep the room from being too dark.

  After she got herself a mug of coffee, she made her way to the small table near the front window where she sat to journal. She set her mug down then used her phone to queue up her favorite playlist, smiling contentedly as soft music played through the hidden speakers in the room. Settling into her chair, she picked up her notebook and pen from the table.

  Drawing her legs up, Cara gazed out the window as she tried to figure out what she wanted to write. When she realized the answer was everything, she bent her head and set her pen to the paper. Words flowed as she tried to capture all the feelings she’d been experiencing while spending time with Kieran. Knowing that what she wrote in the journal would now be for her own memory-keeping rather than for her to read to her papa, she didn’t hesitate to write down everything she’d felt.

  As her words shifted from what had happened to what she hoped the future would hold, Cara looked up and stared unseeing out the window. For the first time since her mom’s death, she felt hope and the freedom to dream about a future.

  She hadn’t consciously realized that hope had slipped away. There had been so much
else going on that she hadn’t been able to focus too much on what she wanted for the rest of her life.

  Since meeting Kieran, however, she was finding that her hopes and dreams were coming to life once again. The joy she’d once felt before suffering so much loss was coming back to her. And it wasn’t just Kieran who was responsible for that.

  There had also been something about her father the last time she’d seen him. A peace she hadn’t witnessed before. Up until that moment, his worry about what would happen to her after he passed had caused him untold amounts of stress. This time, he hadn’t seemed resigned to his fate but more at peace with it.

  Cara sank back against the chair, realizing that while her papa was at peace with what was to come for him, she didn’t feel entirely the same way. It was hard to feel at peace when his passing would mean both of her beloved parents would be gone.

  The idea that she’d be on her own at that point still weighed heavily on her, but perhaps not as heavily as it once had. Maybe that was because she knew that all she had to do was open herself up to the people around her, and she wouldn’t be alone. Maybe it was accepting, in a way she never had before, that God was with her. Even in her darkest moment, He would be there for her.

  Feeling drained of words, Cara flipped the journal closed and put it back on the table with the pen. She picked her mug up and took a sip of the now lukewarm coffee.

  Leaning back against the chair, she angled her head so she could see out the window. It eased some of the constant ache within her to know that when the time came to grieve her papa’s passing, Kieran would be there for her.

  ~*~

  “Chief! You need to come.”

  Kieran looked up from the file he’d been reading at the request of a detective in Everett. Every once in awhile, one of the guys he knew in Everett would ask for his input on a case, aware that Kieran had previous detective experience from his time of service with the NYPD.

  Without waiting for an explanation, Kieran got to his feet, grabbed his hat, and followed the officer, knowing that none of his staff were prone to hysterics. If they said he needed to come, he would follow them.

  When they reached the main entrance, he saw Lisa tending to a young woman who sat bent forward, a young man hovering at her side.

  “What’s going on?” Kieran asked, keeping his voice low and steady.

  The young man glanced up, and Kieran could see that he was shaken. “We found a body.”

  Kieran’s stomach knotted when he heard the words. “Where?”

  After he listened to the man stumble over his words trying to describe where they’d been, he finally said, “How about you take us to where you found it?”

  The man glanced at the woman sitting on the seat next to Lisa.

  “I’ll take good care of her,” Lisa said, giving him a reassuring smile. “Go with the chief and show him what you found.”

  The man nodded, then bent down to talk to the woman. “I’ll be back, babe. Just wait for me here, okay?”

  She nodded and lifted her head to look at him. He gave her a quick kiss before straightening. “I’m ready.”

  Kieran wasn’t sure he was. The thought that kept going through his head was whether this was the body of a recently deceased person or if it might have been there a long time…like from ten years ago when Sheila had disappeared.

  “Carl, follow me in your car,” he said to the officer who’d first called him from his office. Turning to another officer who’d come to the front of the station, he added, “Let Everett know we’re going to need help. I’ll phone you with an update as soon as I have one.”

  He walked out the front door of the station with the young man at his side. Kieran got behind the wheel of his official SUV and waited as the man climbed in next to him.

  As they drove, he got some basic information, mostly about the couple and what they’d been doing in the area. The man—Steve—guided him northeast of the town, up the road that led into the mountains. He pointed out the lot where they’d parked to do some hiking.

  Kieran pulled into a spot then waited for Carl to park next to him. Together, they followed Steve as he led the way up a trail then showed them where they’d gone off the path to take some pictures.

  “We were just over there,” Steve said. “Then we noticed bones and clothes.”

  Bones and clothes. A chill swept down Kieran’s spine. He hoped he wasn’t going to have to make a death notification to Pete, but he supposed at least then their wondering about what had happened to Sheila would be over. But he couldn’t make an official notification until they knew for sure who the victim was, and by that time, Pete would probably have already heard that a body had been found.

  Pushing aside everything but the facts—of which there were none just yet—Kieran pulled out his phone and made the call to update his boss in Everett. He wanted to approach the remains to see if he could find anything that might identify the body as Sheila’s, but he stayed back. If this was, in fact, a murder, the deceased deserved to have their killer found, so Kieran wouldn’t do anything to disturb the crime scene.

  After he’d given detailed directions to the scene to the Everett detective, Kieran told Carl to take Steve back to the station and get a statement from both him and his girlfriend. Though he cautioned them both about not speaking to anyone about the finding, he knew it was only a matter of time before word began to spread. The vehicles from Everett would have to pass through the town, and some eagle-eyed resident was sure to recognize them for what they were.

  Alone in the quiet of the woods, he said a prayer for the family of the victim, whoever it was. There was a part of him that had a hard time believing it could be anyone but Sheila. After all, to his knowledge, they hadn’t had any other missing person reports in the past few decades.

  If it was Sheila, and she’d been murdered, then they had a killer who’d been on the loose for ten years. And he knew this would impact Eli, but he still had no doubt of the man’s innocence. It was just too bad the detective wasn’t as certain of it, which meant Eli would be called back in for questioning yet again.

  The beauty of nature surrounded him, but right then, he couldn’t appreciate it. Death had marred the beauty and left him with questions, the answers to which he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Even if it wasn’t Sheila, the fact would remain that someone had either died there in the woods or been brought there to be buried. Neither scenario was great, and both would leave the people of the area shaken.

  Kieran took off his hat and ran his hand through his hair, then settled himself on a nearby rock to await the arrival of the crime scene technicians from Everett. He kind of doubted that there would be much to find beyond the body itself. If it really was just bones, that meant it had been out there far longer than a few weeks, which also likely meant that any evidence of the killer was probably long gone. It would make it that much harder to solve the case, but they would do their best.

  The peacefulness of the forest was broken a short time later when Carl arrived back with the first of the crime scene team. Kieran met them and relayed what he knew so far about the body and where it was located.

  Kieran sighed when his not-so-favorite detective showed up about a half an hour after everyone else had arrived.

  “You think it’s our girl?” he asked as he lit a cigarette then put it between his lips.

  “No clue,” Kieran said. “We don’t even know if the body is male or female yet. We’ll just have to wait until the coroner or the forensic pathologist has a look.”

  The detective grunted as he took a drag from the cigarette, his gaze on the group of people working within the taped off area.

  The coroner arrived a short time later and, after greeting them, made his way to the crime scene. Kieran could feel the tension rolling off the detective, but thankfully, the man was keeping his thoughts to himself. They weren’t what Kieran wanted to hear right then. He had plenty of his own thoughts, and none of them were good.

  Rem
embering that he’d told Cara that he might come by the studio for lunch, Kieran pulled his phone out and tapped a message to her.

  I’m not going to be able to make lunch today. Something’s come up at work.

  Cara: I’m sorry to hear that. Hope it’s nothing too serious.

  Unfortunately, it is kind of serious. I’ll talk to you about it later.

  Cara: Stay safe.

  Kieran sighed as he read the words. In this particular situation, he wasn’t concerned about his safety or that of the people around him, but that might not always be the case. There might come a day when his personal safety was a concern, and he couldn’t help but wonder—again—how Cara might react to that. It was a conversation they needed to have soon. He needed to tell her about his past with Toni and what had led to them breaking up.

  When the coroner approached them awhile later, he said, “It appears to be an adult female. Cause of death, I’m going to assume, because of the knife between her ribs, is a stabbing.”

  “The murder weapon is still there?” Kieran asked as he watched the team carry the body bag toward the trail leading to the parking lot.

  “I’ll have more details once I get the body back to the morgue. I didn’t see any sign of a gunshot wound, just the knife.” The man ran a hand through his snowy hair. “We’ll probably need the forensic anthropologist on this since all we’re left with is bones.”

  “How long will that take?” the detective asked.

  The coroner shrugged. “At this point, I have no clue. I’ll have to talk to her and see what her schedule is like.”

  “Where there any clothes or jewelry with the body?”

  “All that’s been bagged. You’ll have to talk to the crime scene team to see what they found.”

  The detective gave a huff of impatience, and for once, Kieran agreed with the man. He wanted answers sooner rather than later, but in this particular case, he knew the answers were going to be slow coming. There would be no fingerprints, at least not on the victim, and he didn’t think they’d get lucky and find any on the knife. The fact that the knife had been left with the body told him that the perpetrator had probably known they weren’t leaving anything behind that could be traced back to them.