Christmas Conspiracy

by Robin Perini

His mind whirled with the possibilities, and they ate at his gut. He knew the truth. Holding this necklace meant his mother had never made it off the ranch.

  Kat came closer. “Logan?” She peered over his shoulder. “What is that?”

  A nightmare. He fought the memories of anger and accusations from that last day. A blessing. A curse.

  An answer, and the start of a million dark, ugly questions that he didn’t want to ask. Dear God, how could it still be here?

  “It’s my mother’s necklace. I gave it to her when I was ten. She wore it every day and swore she’d never take it off.” He met Kat’s troubled gaze. “As far as I know, she kept that promise.” He looked down at the broken chain, knowing the force it would take to wrench the links apart.

  Struggling to hold himself together, Logan walked into his office off the living room and unlocked the lower drawer in his desk. He removed an evidence bag, a clean sheet of paper, then donned plastic gloves. How convenient, he thought, to be the kind of man to have a crime kit ready for a possible murder on his own property.

  What was wrong with this picture?

  Gretchen’s sob filtered through the doorway, but he couldn’t speak. She recognized what his preparations meant. The possibility of his mother’s disappearance being a homicide had been raised more than once. Logan knew it, but he couldn’t let his mind go there. For a minute…just a minute, couldn’t he be a son who might have lost his mother in a far different way?

  He sank into the leather chair behind his desk and flicked the clasp. The heart locket opened. A tuft of black hair and the picture of a toddler grinning made his eyes sting.

  He touched the photo and closed his eyes, letting memories swim through him. There had been good times. Particularly when his father left on one of his frequent out-of-town trips. His mother’s footsteps had lightened; her laughter had pealed through the house.

  Lavender scent wafted over him. He blinked at Kat over his shoulder.

  “I see Hayden in you.”

  Logan paused, a bittersweet recollection breaking through his emotions. “My mother said she hoped I’d have a little boy just like me. She loved me so much, she wanted me to be just as happy as her.” He snapped the locket closed.

  He clenched the evidence bag in his fist. “Do you know how much I hated her for leaving me?” Logan stood up, and stared at the necklace in his palm. “What if she didn’t? What if someone stopped her?”

  Gretchen and Kat watched him warily, not answering.

  He slipped the necklace into the plastic evidence bag, reaching for control he didn’t feel.

  Logan strode into the living room, plucked his daughter from the pillow jungle and sat with her on his lap in his big leather recliner.

  Lanie’s eyes had gone wide with uncertainty.

  Great. He was scaring his daughter. He could interrogate terrorists or criminals, but how did he drag information out of a two-and-a-half-year-old?

  “Sweetie,” Logan said, gentling his voice. “Where did you find this necklace?”

  Her eyes brightened. “My neckwess! I found it.” Lanie reached for the baggie, then scooped it into her hands to thrust toward Kat. “It’s for you, Mommy. I saw it and got it all by myself.”

  Logan, recognizing the pride in his daughter’s face, forced himself to calm down.

  Kat gave him a supportive smile. “Thank you, Lanie.” Kat retrieved the locket. “Now, where did you find it?”

  Lanie’s bottom lip trembled slightly. “Where the kitty got lost.”

  Logan could feel the urgency rise within him. “Can you show me?”

  His daughter looked down at her hands. “No.”

  “Honey, why can’t you tell us?” Kat asked.

  Lanie frowned, obviously upset. “I’m not s’posta go there. Daddy yelled at me cuz I got stuck in the bad place.”

  Logan turned his daughter to face him. “Lanie, I’m sorry. I was scared. I couldn’t find you and I didn’t want you to get hurt.” He held up the evidence bag. “Was this in the bad place?”

  Lanie nodded. “Where the mommy kitty hides her babies. It was stuck on a pointy rock. I had to try really hard to reach it.”

  “You don’t have to go, honey,” Kat said, meeting Logan’s gaze. “Gretchen, could you distract our little adventurers while we go outside?”

  A few minutes later they had donned coats and picked across the construction site until they reached the hundred-year-old well. Logan’s crew had moved some of the old boards back over the opening. Years of grit and dirt had covered the original planks, hiding the presence of the well.

  He swallowed hard, then pulled the locket out to stare at it again. “I thought she left.”

  She touched his hand lightly. “I’m here if you need me.”

  He wanted to believe her. Logan put the locket away. He’d heard words like that before and trusted them. From her. From his mother. From Daniel. On a mission, the situation was different. Lies were part of the game. He could handle the betrayals. He expected them. But when it was personal…he’d been burned by believing in those “implied promises.” He’d been wrong—at least twice. He didn’t know what to think anymore.

  Logan peered under a large pile of discarded barn boards and beams where the mother cat had hidden her kittens. His mind churning with dark thoughts. He snagged a flashlight from his coat pocket, flicked it on and ran it across the ledge where he’d found Lanie. Dried blood still marred the rock, but the stain was darker now, almost black. A lot like the ones on the sharp rock several inches away from the ledge.

  He could picture the worst case in his mind, driving dread straight through him. Lanie could’ve tumbled all the way down the well. Struck her head. His heart twisted in pain. He could have lost her.

  If his mother’s necklace had been yanked from her throat when she struck that sharp rock on the way down, then she might be… He shone the light into the recesses, slowly scanning one section at a time. Debris blocked most of the view of the bottom, but finally the beam passed over several areas of white and a few flashes of color.

  Logan paused his movement, his heart pounding, and leaned against the stone wall, trying for a closer look. Did he want to find his mother here? Knowing if she’d fallen, she’d been injured and probably calling out for help for days before dying? Or had she looked into someone’s eyes…a man who’d sworn to always love her…before he pushed her to her death?

  Would Logan ever know?

  He gripped the stone wall and stood back. Dirt fluttered down the well, echoing on the way down, the hollow sound mirroring his emotions.

  Struggling against a childhood dread, Logan rounded the structure to get a better angle and swept the inside surface again, foot by foot. More dark splatters appeared on jutting rocks, and finally the light pierced a deeply shadowed spot beneath a series of crumbling wooden planks.

  He could just make out several distinctive white shapes. Human bones. He shined the light farther revealing a human skull. Logan gasped, even though he’d known what he would find. Below the ledge where Lanie had fallen lay the skeleton of his mother.

  The mother who had never left.

  * * *

  LOGAN LOOKED SO ALONE, he hurt Kat’s heart. He stood, separate and apart, watching as a crane lowered a member of the forensics team foot by foot into the well to take more photographs. She didn’t know how long she’d studied his stiff posture. He hadn’t budged since the medical examiner he’d had flown in arrived.

  The entire day had taken on a surreal quality. Because there was no way of knowing how the body had ended up in the well, the ME was treating the case as a homicide. The guarded looks the workers threw around were telling. They had their suspicions.

  Kat couldn’t imagine what Logan was feeling right now. She’d suffered the devastating loss of her mother, but that had been to cancer. Not a possible murder. He’d believed he’d been abandoned the last fifteen years, only to find out he was wrong. The darkness and anguish in his eyes were haunting.
Did he blame himself for not finding her before this?

  Being around Logan this long, she guessed he would.

  Investigators, photographers and various crime units spread over the area. Kat walked across the yard, wanting to comfort him, but she hesitated. In the hours since he’d rushed back to the house, he hadn’t said much of anything to anyone, except to get this investigation started. He’d disappeared into his office, and a dozen calls later, his disciplined focus got him everything he wanted. She’d never seen law enforcement act so quickly.

  Each passing hour etched deeper lines of strain into his lean cheeks.

  Did he know he didn’t have to be alone anymore? He was trying to remain strong and in control, when this had to be tearing him apart. If only he’d lean on her, like she leaned on him.

  The kids were napping. Gretchen waited inside listening for any stir. She knew who needed her—if he let her in. When she reached his side, his shoulders tensed and his hands fisted, but he didn’t move. Not knowing what else to do, she lifted his fist to her lips and kissed it gently. When he relaxed his hand, she threaded her fingers through his. “I want to be with you. Is that okay?”

  He frowned and stared down at her hand as if their threaded fingers were something strange and unusual. Yet he didn’t step away, just nodded.

  After a moment of silence, he said, “They’ve confirmed it’s a woman. Thirties or forties.” His voice was matter-of-fact, but the husky edge gave his emotions away. “She’s been there a long time.”

  His grip tightened on Kat’s hand, but she didn’t mention it. “What are you thinking?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “I do, Logan. Talk to me.”

  He turned toward her. “I’m thinking that I suck as a son. If that’s my…my mother,” Logan gestured toward the well, “she’s been a few hundred feet from my front door for fifteen years and I never knew it.”

  She raised a hand to his injured cheek. “You were a kid when it happened.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I never looked for her,” he insisted. “I just figured she ran off. I was lying in my bed crying and cursing her for leaving me on my birthday, while she was out here dying.” He swore. “What a selfish jerk I was. I probably still am.” He shook his head and backed off. “Sorry. Now is not the time for me to be around anyone.”

  Screaming sirens and red and blue strobe lights from an approaching vehicle stopped Kat from responding. The noise drowned out the sound of the crane. An SUV barreled down the road and skidded to a halt in front of the house.

  Two men exited the sheriff’s vehicle and walked toward them. Logan greeted them, not even a tinge of emotion in his voice.

  Kat stood nearby, wishing she could hold him tight and not let him go.

  Logan took in a deep breath and reached out his hand to the sheriff. “Thanks for coming, Blake.” Logan nodded at the other man. “Deputy Parris.”

  Logan gestured her way. “This is Kat. Protective detail.”

  She stiffened, then turned to look at Logan, stunned. Protective detail? In other words, a client? Icy hurt swept through her. It was all she could do not to cry.

  The sheriff, a tall, striking man, touched the tip of his Stetson and nodded in acknowledgment, “Ma’am.”

  Deputy Parris followed suit.

  The sheriff, his hazel eyes worried, gazed at the madhouse around them. “Sorry it took us so long. Serious accident on the road out to Big Springs,” Blake said. “What’s the latest?”

  “I think we found my mother’s body.”

  Both the sheriff and his deputy froze in place.

  “Your ma never left?” Parris finally blurted out. “But I remember hearing—”

  Blake cleared his throat cutting off the deputy’s words.

  “You can say it,” Logan interjected. “Everyone thought she abandoned me and my father. Including us. My father pretty much drank himself to death after that.” Logan looked out across the ranch, the only legacy he had left from his mother. “I can’t believe she was here all the time.”

  Blake tilted his Stetson back. “How’d you find her?”

  “My daughter was chasing a stray kitten and fell down an old, covered-up well.”

  “Whoa. Hold on.” The sheriff stepped back. “Since when do you have a daughter?”

  Kat felt her face flush and the sheriff’s gaze flashed from her to Logan, then returned to her, his eyes narrowing this time. Not necessarily in a friendly way.

  Logan ignored Blake’s question about his daughter and gave him a factual rundown of Lanie finding the necklace.

  “I tore down the old barn to make room for a new building,” Logan ended. “Dad had closed off this area about ten years ago. He said these outbuildings and the grounds were too unstable. The earth movers have really churned things up lately.”

  Kat recognized the speculation in the sheriff’s eyes.

  “Your father closed this area off?” Blake ventured. “Have you considered—”

  “That he killed my mom and hid the body? Hell, yeah.”

  Kat froze in shock. Logan suspected his father of killing his mother? Her heart ached for him, but her mind worried. The disconnected expression on Logan’s face. She barely recognized the man she’d begun to care for again.

  “What do you remember from that day?” Blake pulled out his notebook. “Did they fight?”

  Logan nodded. “My father was a mean SOB when he got drunk and he’d really tied one on that day. He told her he hated the ranch and everything about it because it was hers. Hated that my mom had more than him and she’d told him straight up, the ranch was mine if she died. If he could’ve sold it, he probably would have, but she left it in my name and told everyone about it. Instead, he did his best to gamble it away.”

  Kat couldn’t imagine what Logan had gone through growing up. Instinctively, she reached out and clasped his hand. To her surprise, he held it tightly in his grasp.

  Blake closed his notebook. “I think we’d better talk some more later.”

  Logan nodded, but his face showed no emotion now—as if he’d gone back behind his protective wall, but his hand squeezed Kat’s and she responded in kind, letting him know she was there for him.

  Blake’s gaze dropped to their linked hands and he quirked a brow at Logan. “You say your little girl found the necklace? Can I talk to her?”

  “The twins are in the house,” Logan said. “It’s been rough. I interviewed her. She’s not really old enough to be much help.”

  Blake stopped, putting his notebook away in his pocket. “Twins?”

  “Boy and girl. Two and a half years old.”

  “Okayyyy,” the sheriff drawled. “I guess I need to come around more often to keep up with the latest events.”

  Kat could see all the facts Logan had thrown out registering in Blake’s mind. She could tell from his expression he knew a lot more about her than she’d originally suspected. She was the woman who had run from Logan three years ago, and now she was back with two kids in tow, obviously in dire financial straits based on her clothing. Did he see her as a gold digger? Is that how all Logan’s friends would see her?

  Her grip tightened on Logan’s hand, but he subtly shook it off as an attractive woman in a coroner’s jacket walked toward them. The woman had come to a crime scene dressed in a suit and heels? Was she kidding? She must’ve been called away from some fancy function.

  Kat’s old insecurities flared at the woman’s put-together appearance compared to her own faded jeans and much-worn shirt. She remembered all too well how everyone had laughed at the hand-me-down clothes that her mother had patched and rehemmed over and over, in the hopes the tattered material would last through another season.

  The woman greeted everyone as old friends, her smile teasing and comfortable. Kat could learn to hate her. Or really like her, more’s the pity. “Logan. Blake. Deputy Parris.” Her glance skimmed over Kat, to whom she gave a quick nod when Logan finally made introductions, with even l
ess information than before.

  “Debra,” Blake said, “what do you know so far?”

  Doctor Sandoval sent a quick, sympathetic look to Logan. “Lots of trauma, but that’s to be expected from the depth of the well. We found her purse. Her license was in it. There’s little doubt it’s Hannah Carmichael.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry, Logan. I know how close you two were, but perhaps this will give you a sense of closure that she’s been found.”

  “Did she…” Logan began, his voice so soft they were barely audible. “Was she…beaten?”

  Sorrow lit the coroner’s eyes. “I can’t tell yet.”

  “I want to know.”

  “I won’t keep anything from you. I remember what you went through.” She placed her hand on his arm and met Logan’s gaze, a connection between them briefly flaring.

  Kat recognized the familiarity, the softness in the woman’s eyes. The awareness in their touch. They’d been lovers once. Had Kat’s coming here interrupted something? Her stomach roiled. No, Logan would have told her, but it was obvious that Debra Sandoval still had strong feelings for him.

  “Dr. Sandoval.”

  The coroner turned toward one of the workers and nodded at him before facing Logan. “I’ll keep you informed, and I promise I’ll get you every answer possible.” She kissed his cheek. “Again, I’m so sorry about your mother.”

  Dr. Sandoval offered quick goodbyes to the others before following the worker back to the site.

  Kat watched Logan’s lover go. The woman was beautiful, sophisticated, educated. A doctor. Everything Kat wasn’t. Someone who would fit into Logan’s life. Suddenly, Kat’s place next to him didn’t feel quite so comfortable. He hadn’t reached for her hand again after he’d let her go. Perhaps Dr. Sandoval had reminded him of what he could have, while all Kat had brought him was trauma.

  He’d been so amazing from the moment he’d saved her life, she’d started to take his presence for granted, to assume the feelings sparking between them were real. To him, maybe she was just a protection detail.

  She couldn’t take the uncertainty. “I need to check on the kids,” she said, trying to push down the hurt and confusion rising in her throat.