by Debra Webb
But it was a lie.
She had been lying to herself. The people in this town had known Cece her entire life. Certain teachers she remembered from school had made her feel smart and relevant. A couple had urged her to go on to college but she had known that could not happen. There was never enough money or opportunity. Still, deep down she did not want those teachers to believe she had murdered another human—even one like her father.
In the living room, she stared at her reflection in the mirror next to the front door. She looked older than her twenty-eight years. Tired. Weary of this life and she had barely begun to live it. What did a man like Deacon Ross see when he looked at her? A woman? Or a screwed-up kid who had nothing but this old house and the spot of land it perched on?
She blinked away the thought. He was a kind neighbor, a man who had made a promise to her grandmother’s lawyer friend to watch after her. Probably he saw her as an obligation—one he likely regretted having accepted.
“Don’t even start, Cece.”
She turned away from the mirror and walked across the room to the corner where the desk that her grandmother had used for letter writing stood. Until the day she died, her grandmother had clung to the handwritten form of communication. She had insisted that cell phones and the internet would be the end of polite society.
Cece found a notepad and pen. No matter that a mere twenty-four hours had passed, she understood one thing with utter certainty: she needed a project besides the search for the truth. Her grandmother had entrusted her with this home—the home she had worked hard to keep all those years as a widow. Whether Cece stayed or left, she owed it to her grandmother to take care of the place. Anything she did to shape up the house would be an investment for later if and when she sold it.
The mere thought was like a betrayal of her grandmother. But Cece knew Emily would understand whatever she decided to do. She had told her so in letter after letter. Her grandmother had not expected her to stay in Winchester.
“Paint.” Cece wrote the word, shifting her attention to the necessary.
Next she jotted down roof, exterior caulk and paint. Deacon had mentioned those things. He had also offered to help. She would do as much as she could herself before she went to anyone else. As a kid she remembered her father’s church going to the homes of the elderly and doing things like painting and general maintenance. Funny, no one had come to do any of those things for her grandmother.
“No surprise,” she muttered. The people who belonged to her father’s so-called church weren’t good people.
They were followers of his hatred and cruelty.
No matter that she did not kill him, she was glad he was dead. Grateful not to have to wake up with the worry of running into him or having him show up unannounced to torture her with his hateful words.
She opened the front door to step outside and survey the roof and siding as best she could. A van rolling to a stop in the driveway caused her to stall on the porch. Her heart had already started to pound by the time her eyes and brain assimilated the name of the delivery service printed on the side.
“Morning.” The man in the uniform waved as he walked around to the rear of the van. He opened the doors at the back.
Cece walked to the edge of the porch and started down the steps. “Morning.”
Who would be sending anything to her?
The man rolled a hand truck toward where she stood. Three boxes were stacked one on top of the other.
“Cecelia Winters?” he asked as he stopped at the bottom of the steps.
“Yes.” She looked from the boxes to him.
“These are for you.” He passed her a clipboard. “Just sign at the bottom.”
She stared at the form. “Who sent the boxes?”
“Clarence Frasier.”
Cece’s gaze connected with his. “That’s impossible. Mr. Frasier died two months ago.”
The man shrugged. “You would have to call the office to get the details. They’ll be open on Monday.”
She nodded. Told herself it was possible his office had sent them rather than have her come by to pick them up. She signed the form and handed the clipboard back to the waiting man.
“Thank you.”
He looked from her to the boxes. “Look, we’re not supposed to go inside, but I can pull these up the steps and right inside the door, if you’d like.”
She nodded. “I would appreciate it.”
“No problem.” He smiled, and the expression sparked in his eyes.
He did not know her, of that she was confident. If he did, he wouldn’t have smiled so kindly or even have made the offer to go beyond what was required of him.
He pulled the load of boxes up the steps, rolled the hand truck across the porch and through the door—just across the threshold, as he had said. He scooted the load off the hand truck and was out the door and down the steps with the efficiency of someone who had been doing the job for a good long while.
“Have a nice day!” he called as he headed back to his van.
Cece watched him load up and go. She waited until he had turned onto the road before going inside and closing the door. On second thought, she locked it, as well. Deacon had warned her to keep her door locked at all times. Considering last night’s visitors, she intended to keep the doors and the windows locked. Thank God for the air conditioning window unit and the ceiling fans, otherwise she would be burning up.
A few minutes were required to find something to cut the tape on the boxes. She slid the knife blade along the edges until the flaps opened. Inside each box was another box, the sort in which files were kept. She stacked one after the other next to the couch. Then she removed the lids. An envelope with her name on it sat on top of the folders inside one of the boxes.
She opened the unsealed envelope. It was a handwritten letter from Mr. Frasier.
Cecelia,
If someone besides me has delivered these boxes, then I am dead. I don’t expect that my death was any sort of unusual event. Probably a heart attack. My doctor has been after me about my blood pressure for ages. I suppose I should have listened better.
First, your grandmother has left you a sizable savings at First Union. Last I checked it was fifty thousand and some change. She said you should buy something better than that damned old truck. You know she always hated the thing.
Cece gasped. Tears crowded into her eyes as she thought of the woman who had been more of a parent to her than the man who had boasted the title father.
Use it wisely. Since the house is paid for, this should tide you over for a bit. In addition, your grandmother left a scholarship fund for you to use for college. These funds cannot be used for any other purpose. She was quite sneaky about that. She knew how smart you are and she wanted you to have the opportunity to explore all possibilities. Don’t let her down.
Lastly, these are my working files from your case. I only wanted you to have them so that you would understand the insurmountable odds that were stacked against you. You have served your time. Don’t waste any more on this case. Move forward, put the past behind you. Proving your innocence will not give you those years back.
Your grandmother’s greatest wish was for you to be happy. Grant her that wish, Cece. And yourself.
Sincerely,
Clarence Frasier
Cece swiped at the tears dampening her cheeks. College. She had not even considered college. Though she had taken a few random classes in prison, she felt too old for college. But she knew that wasn’t true. Lots of people older than her went to college.
She drew in a shaky breath and placed the letter on the coffee table. She rubbed her palms against her jeans and reached for the first file in the first box. This one contained a copy of the arrest record along with her lovely mugshot.
God, she looked so young. She had been, barely nineteen. A kid. Flashes of mem
ory detonated in her brain like tiny explosions. Her hands in her father’s blood.
You.
He just kept saying that one word over and over.
And then nothing.
The police had arrived. Question after question was fired at her. Her father’s closest followers had filed in, throwing around accusations, praying fervently, then accusing her some more. Marcus had shown up. He had ranted at her.
What have you done?
Then the handcuffs had gone onto her wrists. The deputy had recited her rights as they led her away from her father’s house, his blood all over her.
She remembered being ushered into the back seat of the patrol car. The door closing with a thud of finality. The radio on the dash crackling with voices.
Codes and words she had not understood at the time but did now.
Homicide. Perpetrator. In custody. Numerous other words and phrases that meant just two things: a man was dead, murdered, and they had the killer in custody.
End of story.
Except it wasn’t true. It was a mistake. A setup. A lie.
Fury tightened her lips. She would go to college, just like her grandmother wanted. But first she had a story to rewrite.
Her story.
* * *
DEACON STARED AT the screen of his laptop. Cece sat on the sofa, file folders spread over the coffee table in front of her. She alternately cried and swore.
Part of him hated that he had planted cameras in her house and now watched her at a private moment like this. He kicked aside that too-human emotion. He needed the truth. Sympathy for her—this damned attraction he felt for her—would do nothing but get in his way. He had to remember those cold, hard facts. Ten years he had been in the Bureau. Ten years of training and hard work. His training had taught him not to get personally involved.
But that training had not been able to stop him.
He had spent months reading every single thing about this woman. Watching her at the prison. The warden had happily agreed to allow Deacon to stop by and observe the prisoner any time he wanted to. He had been allowed to read the incident reports, to interview her guards and other inmates.
He was well versed in most things that had happened to her inside those damned walls. Of course, not every incident was reported. The inmates had their own code. Cece had eventually learned to play by their rules. It was the only way to survive and she was a survivor.
One of the female guards he had paid to keep an eye on her had told him about the male guard who tried to rape Cece in the beginning. Another inmate had come to her aid in the nick of time. As it turned out, the Good Samaritan inmate was someone the attorney, Clarence Frasier, had paid to see after Cece. Well, he had not actually paid the inmate, he had taken care of the woman’s mother and two kids for the service she provided.
Frasier had been that convinced of Cece’s innocence.
That was the part that bugged Deacon. The reports and the scarce evidence backed his conclusions, but the lawyer and his passion about her innocence did not fit neatly into the scenario the former sheriff had built about Cecelia Winters.
The last part had not mattered to Deacon, not in all these months. And yet, in the past twenty-four hours, his confidence had started to slip. She had somehow breached his defenses, made him want to believe she was innocent. His training, his instincts, had kicked in the moment he first encountered her face-to-face. All those months of watching her from a distance, of reading the files—the same ones she read now—had not prepared him for the up-close encounter with her.
She exuded an honesty he could not deny and he hated himself for recognizing it.
He scrubbed a hand over his jaw and looked away as she set her face in her hands and started to sob.
Where was the evil, conniving woman he had expected? The one he had seen stand up to other inmates in prison? The one he had watched scrape her way through the final months of an eight-year sentence?
How had he seen that woman and not this one?
He closed his eyes as the answer echoed inside him.
She’d worn that tough mask to survive. He should have known—should have recognized the tactic—but he had not wanted to. He had wanted to see the heartless killer he had imagined her to be.
He had watched the taped interview of when she was questioned about his partner. She had sworn she did not know him. Had never seen him before. But she had lied. Deacon had recognized the lie in her eyes.
Whether she was responsible for Jack’s disappearance or not, she knew something about what happened to him.
By God, he intended to find out what that something was.
He closed the laptop, grabbed his hat and walked out the door. He should stop himself right there, turn around and go back inside to watch her from a distance.
But that wouldn’t get the job done.
He had to get closer.
Rather than walk, he drove to her house. During the short ninety-second trip he arrived at the perfect excuse for stopping by. It was easy. He had come up with dozens during the long planning stages of his strategy. All he had to do was pick one.
He parked, climbed the steps and knocked on her door.
She was slow to answer. Probably wiping away her tears and attempting to gather her composure. When she opened the door, it was clear she had failed miserably.
“Morning. I was headed into town for supplies and I thought you might want some more paint.” He nodded to the door next to her. The red letters of the word murderer still lingered behind the layer of white she had brushed over them, giving the accusation a ghostly appearance.
He had spelled out that word with the red paint he bought at one of those hardware supercenters two towns over. He had wanted her to come home to that message, to feel the shame and the guilt.
He had watched Cece paint over the graffiti and he had hated himself for what he’d done.
Now, she stood in that doorway, her eyes red from crying yet again, and he hated himself even more.
Worse, he hated himself for hating himself.
How screwed up was that?
She moistened her lips, propped them into an unsteady smile. “Sure. That would be great. White exterior paint, please. I have money.”
She turned and headed inside before he could stop her. She had found the money her grandmother had hidden for her.
There was more. He wasn’t sure she knew about it yet.
He had interviewed her grandmother. The woman had believed Cece walked on water. Had adored her grandchild. He had pretended to want to help. That he had lied to the kind, elderly woman gnawed relentlessly at his gut even now.
He had done a lot of things over the past year he shouldn’t have. Twice he had tried to forget. Had walked away and said he was done with the whole thing. Then a week or two later he was back, watching her again, asking more questions. Searching for that elusive truth he could not find.
He was a fool.
She was back at the door offering him a one hundred dollar bill. “I have no idea how much paint costs now. I need the stuff that blocks stains, too.”
Her hand trembled ever so slightly as he stared at it. Before he could stop himself he closed his hand over hers. “What’s happened that has you so upset?”
That his whole body yearned to hold more than her hand deepened that self-hatred rotting inside him.
“I received the files from my attorney’s office. I’ve been going through them and...” She shook her head. “Sorry.” She swiped at the fresh wave of tears that slipped down her cheeks. “I don’t know why I’m so emotional. I haven’t read anything I didn’t already know about.” She shrugged her slender shoulders. “But reading the statements—word for word—that recount the things my sister and older brother said about me was...painful. More so than I expected. It’s ridiculous, I know. I sat in that court
room and heard them answer the questions from the district attorney. But that was so many years ago and some of that time is like a blur. There was no shock or denial to soften the ugliness this time.”
“People—even the people we think we know—can hurt us in ways we don’t anticipate.”
She stared up at him. Her eyes wide with sadness and uncertainty. “I tried to be a good daughter, a good sister, but I couldn’t be what they wanted.” She dropped her head, shook it. “Not even for Levi. I left. Left him and Sierra with that evil bastard and they were just kids.”
His thumb slid over the inside of her wrist. “You were just a kid, too.”
“A kid.” She made a sound that was probably a stab at a laugh but did not quite hit the mark. “I was accused of murdering my own father before I was twenty. Left my baby sister and brother to fend for themselves when I was sixteen. I must have been a very bad person, Deacon. This kind of stuff doesn’t happen to good people.”
He released her hand before he turned any stupider than he already had. “How about a brush? You need a paintbrush? Drop cloth? Anything else?”
She shoved the money at him again. “Guess so.”
He held up a hand and backed away a step. “I got this.”
Turning his back, he had almost made it to the steps when she stopped him with a question he could not ignore.
“Why are you really doing this, Deacon Ross? I know I’ve asked you already.” She shook her head. “I guess I keep expecting a different answer. Some hidden motive I don’t see coming.”
If he had hated himself before, he genuinely despised himself now. He faced her once more, the depth of the porch between them. “You need someone to care.” He shrugged, his gut twisting with the words he did not want to say but could not hold back. “Now lock your door. I’ll be back soon.”
When he climbed into his truck and started to back away, she still watched him.
