by Rita Herron
But if he didn’t win today, he would go back inside.
Back to the dismal existence and that damn cell block that had become his life.
The judge cleared his throat. “After studying the evidence collected fifteen years ago, and after reviewing the current DNA evidence supplied, the court agrees that a mistake was made in this case. I’m ruling to overturn your conviction.” His expression turned grave. “The court offers its deepest apologies to you, Mr. Mahoney, but also issues you a warning. We’re trying to right a wrong here today. Remember that, and don’t use your incarceration as an excuse to make trouble.”
Matt exhaled slowly, the burning ache of disbelief rolling through him. Had he really heard the judge correctly? After all this time, was he ruling in Matt’s favor?
“You are free to go, Mr. Mahoney. With the court’s regrets, of course.”
He pounded the gavel, ending the session, and Willis jumped up and slapped Matt on the back in congratulations. A deputy stepped forward and removed the ankle bracelet. Matt stood immobile, breathless, as the metal fell away. He couldn’t believe it. He was free. Free to walk out the door for the first time in fifteen years. Free to go anywhere he wanted without a guard breathing down his shoulder, without handcuffs and chains around his ankles. Free to go to bed at night without another man watching him, or worrying that he might never live to see freedom.
But if the judge thought he’d righted the wrong just by releasing him, he was a damn idiot.
Matt had lost fifteen years of his life.
And someone had to answer for that. The town of Kudzu Hollow. Ivy Stanton.
And the person responsible for the Stanton slayings. The real killer had to be punished this time. And Matt would make certain that happened.
Even if it killed him.
“I KNOW YOU’RE STILL grieving over Miss Nellie’s death, Ivy,” George Riddon said. “And I want to help you if you’d let me.”
Ivy stared at her partner at Southern Scrapbooks, the magazine she’d birthed with the help of her own savings and George’s funding, and bit her lip. She’d thought George had stopped by her house to talk business. But so far, his visit had seemed personal. He’d been pushing her to date him for months now, had hinted that he wanted more.
Much more than she could give.
“I’m sorry, George, but it’s just too soon.”
He slid his hands around her arms and held her still when she would have walked away. “Listen, I want you, Ivy. I’ve been patient, but a man can only wait so long. We would be really good together. All you need to do is give us a chance.”
She froze, the note of anger in his voice spiking her own. “No one is asking you to wait.”
A fierce look flashed in his hazel eyes. Eyes before that had always been kind and businesslike. “What are you saying? That you won’t ever…that you can’t see me that way? Is it my age?”
“No, of course not. You’re not that much older than me.” Ivy simply couldn’t see any man that way. She wished she could.
Sometimes she was so lonely.
He released her abruptly and snapped open the September layout she’d completed on Southern romantic rendezvous. “Look at all these places. Maybe if we took a trip together we could kindle the fire between us.”
She glanced down at the rows of pictures she’d scrapbooked for the magazine. Idyllic, charming bed-and-breakfasts in the mountains, the Grand Ole Opry Hotel in Nashville, a cozy inn on the river in New Orleans, the Chattanooga Choo-choo. A deep sadness washed over her. When she’d photographed and finished the layout, she had imagined herself there, walking hand in hand with a lover, making love as the river rushed over rocks nearby. She longed for a companion in life. But as much as she’d tried, she couldn’t imagine that person as George.
“Please just let it go.” She sighed. “I have too much on my mind right now.”
His jaw tightened as he ran a hand over his sandy-blond beard. “I’m beginning to think you’re a cold fish. That you use your past as an excuse so you won’t have to get close to anyone.”
Ivy glared at him. Granted, she hadn’t made a lot of friends, but she wasn’t a cold fish. She needed order to keep the demons at bay. The endless patterns of her day, the routines, the sameness kept her sane and safe.
Get up at seven. Shower. Go to the office. Hit the gym after work for a three-mile run around the track to help her sleep at night. Dinner. Reading. Tea. Bed. Then start it all over the next day, a vicious circle where she was never moving forward, just in a circle like the track.
Sometimes the routines kept the nightmares away. And when those nightmares left her, erotic dreams filled her sleeping hours. Dreams of being touched, loved, caressed by an anonymous dark-haired man. He seemed familiar, but she couldn’t quite see his face or discern his features.
If or when she gave her body to a man, he had to be someone she really wanted to be with, a man who made her feel alive and special. A man who moved emotions inside her. A man she could trust enough to share her secrets.
That man wasn’t George.
“I’m sorry.” He sighed, looking frustrated but resigned. “I know you’re still troubled over Miss Nellie’s diary. But if you don’t get over it, Ivy, this magazine is going to fall apart because you’re not focused.”
She swallowed hard. The magazine was her baby, the only thing she’d ever put her heart into. Failure was not an option.
“What do you have planned for the October issue?” George asked. “The deadlines are approaching.”
“I was thinking about featuring Appalachian folklore and ghost stories. That would fit with the Halloween theme.”
He plucked at his beard again as he chewed over the idea. “That could work. Do you have a specific place in mind?”
“Kudzu Hollow.”
He frowned. “I thought Miss Nellie convinced you not to go back there.”
The television droned in the background, but Ivy froze, momentarily caught off guard when a special news segment flashed on the screen. Abram Willis, the lawyer who’d been working on Matt Mahoney’s case, appeared in front of a massive stone, columned structure, a flock of reporters on his heels. The courthouse in Nashville.
A tall man with thinning hair and a tanning-bed-bronzed complexion stopped in front of the lawyer, blocking his exit. “This is Don Rivers reporting to you from C & N News. We have a live interview with Abram Willis, the nationally acclaimed attorney, currently fighting to free falsely accused prisoners.”
“Ivy—”
“Shh.” She pushed past George and turned up the volume, her eyes glued to the set, her adrenaline churning. The distinguished attorney paused to address the group, absentmindedly straightening his tie, which matched his streaked gray hair. But it was the man beside him who captured Ivy’s attention.
Well over six feet tall with jet-black hair, and eyes so dark brown they looked black. His powerful body exuded pure raw masculinity, as well as bitterness and anger. The scar that zigzagged down his left cheek added an air of brutality that bordered on frightening. But something about his darkness drew her, made her wonder if he really was the hard, cold man he appeared on the surface. Pain radiated from his body, and his eyes held such deep sadness that Ivy literally trembled with compassion.
For a fleeting second, another image passed through the far recesses of her brain, the image of Matt Mahoney as a teenager. He’d been fierce, angry, frightening. But all the teenage girls had wanted him, had whispered about the girls he’d taken in the back of his daddy’s ’75 Chevy.
Now he looked exhausted, half-dead from defeat. Yet a small spark lit his eyes—relief at his sudden and unexpected freedom.
“Mr. Willis, is it true that the court overturned the ruling on Mr. Mahoney’s murder conviction?” Rivers asked. “That he spent fifteen years in jail for a crime that evidence now proves he didn’t commit?”
Willis nodded, puffing up his chest as he straightened his suit jacket, but Matt averted his face
as if shying away from the camera. “That’s correct,” the attorney said. “Justice has finally been served. Mr. Mahoney has been cleared of charges and has been pardoned.”
The reporter shoved a microphone in Matt’s face. “Mr. Mahoney, tell us how it feels to be free.”
“What are you going to do now?” another reporter shouted.
A chorus of others followed. “Are you receiving monetary retribution for the past fifteen years?”
“Are you going home?”
“If you didn’t kill that family, do you know who did?”
Ivy pressed her hand to her mouth, waiting for his answer. But Matt scowled at the camera, pushed the microphone away with an angry swipe of his hand and stalked through the crowd without responding.
“What the hell is it, Ivy?” George said, sliding his hand to her waist. “You act like you’ve seen a ghost.”
She gestured toward the screen with a shaky hand, the black hole of her past threatening to swallow her. “That’s the man who was convicted of killing my parents.”
MATT INHALED THE CRISP fall air as he walked away from the courthouse, barely noting that the smells of grass, honeysuckle and clean air that he’d craved were missing, that the city with its concrete buildings and sidewalks had destroyed those things, just as prison had decimated his dignity. Goddamn bloodsucking reporters. He’d half wanted to use them as a tool to vent his case, since they’d sure as hell done a number on him years ago. But he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
And what could he say?
That he was bitter. That he hated the system that had failed him. That he despised the citizens who still stared at him as if he was guilty. That he wished he had a nice home to go to. Someone waiting on him. A family. A loving wife or lover. Anyone who cared about him. A future.
He didn’t.
In fact, going home meant facing the very people who’d condemned him. The neighbors and family who’d gossiped about his family, testified against his character, thrown him away and forgotten about him.
The ones who believed he was a murderer.
But he would face them, anyway. Because someone in Kudzu Hollow knew the truth about the Stanton slayings and had allowed him to take the fall.
One last glance at the columns of the courthouse and its stately presence, and he remembered all he’d learned in prison. Laws varied, depending on a person’s financial status. For the poor, the old adage “innocent until proven guilty” didn’t matter one iota. In fact, it was the opposite—you were guilty from the beginning, and nothing you said made a damn bit of difference. From the moment the sheriff had slapped handcuffs on him, Matt had been labeled a killer. Not one person in Kudzu Hollow had spoken up to defend him.
Then in prison…hell, everyone screamed they were innocent. He’d had a hard time telling the difference himself. He’d met men bad to the bone, some meaner and more depraved than he’d ever imagined. But other innocents like him, convicted by bad cops, seedy lawyers, piss-poor judges and shoddy crime scene techs, filled the cells, too. Trouble was, once the prisoners were all thrown in there together, fighting for survival took priority.
And they all became animals.
Sweat beaded his forehead at the memory of the acts he’d committed in the name of survival.
His life would never be the same. He’d lost his youth, and for a while his chance for an education, although the last few years he’d pulled himself together and had been studying the law. One day soon, he’d obtain his license and take the bar exam. Become a respectable citizen and prove to the world that it had been wrong about him. Maybe he’d even work with Willis to help free other innocents.
Matt’s chest squeezed, though, as he climbed into the lawyer’s black Cadillac. Now only one thing drove him—bittersweet revenge on the man responsible.
If only he knew his identity.
That fateful night raced back as Willis drove through Nashville, Matt’s mind wandering back in time as the sea of cars and traffic noises swirled around him.
Fifteen years ago, he’d been up to no good, stealing tires from the junkyard, when he’d spotted that little Stanton girl running for her life. Hell, he’d felt sorry for the kid. They’d both grown up in the trailer park that backed up to the junkyard. He knew the kind of life she had. Had heard folks in town gossiping that her mother liked the men, that if she wasn’t married she’d be shacked up in one of Talulah’s Red Row trailers making money on her back. And some said that she did spend her days there with her legs spread wide, entertaining customer after customer while her old man sold car parts and pedaled junk for a living. And Matt had finally learned that was true, although he wasn’t proud of the way he’d found out.
Old man Stanton had beat his wife. They were white trash just like his family. Ivy had been such a puny little thing, with bundles of curly blond hair and those big green eyes that he hated to think of her big-bellied father taking his fists to her. The poor kid didn’t have enough meat or muscle on her to fend off a spider, much less a drunk, two-hundred-pound, pissed old fart who wreaked of whiskey and a bad temper.
When Matt had seen all that blood on her hands and shirt, the devil had climbed inside him. He’d wanted to kill her bastard daddy. Teach him to pound on somebody his own size. And he had gone to the trailer, the one with the torn, yellowed curtains, the broken-down swing set and the beer cans smashed against the porch.
But he hadn’t killed anyone.
No, her mother had been dead when he arrived. A vicious slaying, as if animals had been at it. Matt had damn near lost his dinner seeing all the blood on the floor, like a fucking river. And her daddy had been found later, buried beneath the kudzu, his body slashed and bloody, his face carved as if an animal had ripped him apart.
Not that Matt’s pleas of innocence had mattered.
The sheriff had found his boot prints, his damn fingerprints on the doorknob, and he’d been railroaded to jail for the crime, anyway.
Craving fresh air, and suddenly claustrophobic as prison memories assaulted him, Matt cranked down the window, uncaring that the air that assaulted him was tainted with smog and exhaust fumes. It spelled freedom.
He was thirty-one now. Thirty-one with nowhere to go, nothing to do, and not a soul in the world who gave a damn that he was out. Thirty-one and so damn scarred inside and out that no sane woman would ever want him.
All because he’d had a tender streak for a little girl who hadn’t bothered to show up at his trial and defend him.
Damn fool. That’s what he was. What he’d always been.
But never again.
The sun warmed his face as Willis wove through the heavy rush hour traffic. Matt dragged his mind from the depths of despair where he’d lived for so long, and tried to soak up the changes in the city. New businesses and skyscrapers had cropped up on every corner, rising toward the heavens. Car horns and humming motors of SUVs and minivans whizzing by bombarded him, as did the loud machinery on a construction site. The sight of modern vehicles, the styles so different from fifteen years ago, reminded him of all that he’d missed.
“How about a motel on the outskirts of the city?” Willis asked. “There’s a used car lot across the street, and a motor vehicle place a few blocks away so you can renew your driver’s license tomorrow.”
Matt nodded. “Sounds good.” Willis pulled into a Motel 6 and cut the engine. Matt turned to him, forever grateful. “Thank you for all you did for me, Abram.”
A smile lifted the older man’s lips. “Just don’t make me regret it.”
Matt’s gaze met his, and he nodded. He just hoped he could keep that promise.
Willis handed him an envelope. “Here’s some cash from your account and a credit card. I’ll let you know when the state compensation comes in. It won’t be near enough, but it should help you get started.”
Matt accepted the envelope. “Thanks again.” He shook Abram’s hand, then climbed out, smiling at the fact that he could step outside alone. Then he went ins
ide and registered. A few minutes later, he walked across the street to the Wal-Mart, bought a couple of pairs of jeans and T-shirts, along with some toiletries—all mundane tasks that felt so liberating. Like a kid, excitement stirred inside him as he stopped at the Burger King and ordered a couple of Whoppers and fries. He grabbed the bag, inhaling the smell of fast food with a grin, then walked to the convenience store on the corner, bought a six-pack of beer and headed back to the motel for his celebration.
He had to go back to Kudzu Hollow and face his demons soon, but not tonight.
Tonight he’d celebrate his freedom. Tomorrow he’d renew his driver’s license, buy a car and a used computer, then locate Ivy Stanton. And when he found her, he’d surprise her with a little visit.
Unlike the day the police had questioned her about her parents’ murders, this time she wouldn’t claim she didn’t know what had happened.
This time, she’d damn well do some talking.
ARTHUR BOLES WAVED his son into his office with a glare, popped an antacid tablet into his mouth and released a string of expletives. “Dammit, Crandall, I’ve paid you a small fortune to keep that Mahoney boy in jail. How did you let that confounded fool Willis get him free?”
“Listen, calm down, Arthur,” his attorney screeched over the telephone line. “I did everything I could. By all rights, the boy should have been paroled years ago.”
“But you managed to keep that from happening, so why couldn’t you stop this disaster?”
“I’ve used up all my favors and jeopardized my own reputation for you,” Crandall snapped. “Now I’m through, Arthur. Through doing your dirty work for you, through putting myself on the line. I fully intend to salvage my career and wash my hands of the whole mess.”
Arthur ran a palm over his thinning hair, watching as his son, A.J., paced the room like a caged animal. The boy was nervous. Hell, they all were.
“You can’t walk away from me now, Crandall.”
“I can and I will,” the lawyer snapped. “And if you dare try to use what I’ve done to blackmail me, I will expose you and your son.”
