Little had remained in the account at Adam’s death because there had been withdrawals, too. Big ones. To travel agencies and to hotels in Atlantic City and in Las Vegas. She had known that Adam had liked to play cards, but it appeared as if his fondness for them had progressed to serious gambling. Is that how he had fallen in with Sproule?
Is that why there had been so little money left in her father’s accounts, too? Had Adam emptied them?
No. Please, God, there must be some other explanation.
Hayley descended the steps in front of the bank, her breath coming in sharp bursts. She had spent months digging up every scrap of information on Oliver Sproule that she could, but she’d been so convinced she’d known Sproule’s motive for killing Adam, she hadn’t once questioned it. Why would she waste time investigating her brother?
And yet the facts she had needed were there. All she’d had to do was go and look. She was an accountant, for pity’s sake. She should have thought to check something as basic as how her brother had spent his money.
But questioning that was like ripping apart the very fabric of her life. It would be betraying her brother. It was inconceivable.
Oh, God, this was a nightmare. She wished it would all just go away.
“Hello, beautiful.”
At the sound of Cooper’s voice, her mind blanked. She looked around. Cooper’s pickup was parked at the curb a few spots down from the bank. He was leaning against the passenger door, his arms folded over a plain black T-shirt that stretched over his chest. Faded blue jeans hugged his long legs as he stood with one booted foot crossed over the other. A corner of his mouth tilted upward in a crooked smile.
Hayley instinctively started toward him. He looked so solid, so real, she wanted to run to him and fling herself against him, beg him to wrap her in his arms and carry her someplace safe, as he had done so many times before.
Cooper pushed away from the door and walked to meet her. “Good thing you came outside when you did. I’m pretty sure the people in the bank were starting to get nervous.”
“What?”
He grinned. “I’ve been standing beside my truck, watching the place for twenty minutes.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were here.”
“It’s a joke, Hayley. Bank? Truck parked in front? Getaway driver?”
A car honked somewhere down the street. The breeze rolled a paper coffee cup across the sidewalk. Hayley blinked and forced a smile. “I get it now. Sorry to keep you waiting. Where’s Pete?”
“I sent him back to the Long Shot. He said you came here after you met with Nina.” He pinched the arm of her sunglasses and lifted them up so he could look into her eyes. His grin faded. “What’s wrong? Did that kid do something to upset you?”
Her mind clicked back into gear. Cooper! She had to tell him about what Nina had said, and she needed to tell him what she had learned at the bank. This additional information would break the murder case against Sproule wide open.
Yet she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. Once the truth about her brother was made public, there would be no going back. The shock of learning about Adam’s death had triggered her father’s stroke. In his weakened condition, there was a strong possibility that discovering the truth about the payoffs his son had taken could kill him.
Oh, God. She had lived all her life knowing she had caused her mother’s death. If she revealed what she knew, she could cause her father’s, too.
“Hayley?” Cooper ran his fingertip along her eyebrow. “Are you okay?”
No, she was not okay. She would never be the same again. There was a huge rip in the fabric of her life and it was getting bigger by the minute.
She took her sunglasses from Cooper and fitted them back into place on her nose. How could she get justice for her brother if it meant exposing his corruption?
How could she endanger her father’s health and destroy his illusions about the son he idolized?
Yet by remaining silent, she was betraying Cooper. She was denying him access to the evidence that would allow him to fulfill his bargain with Tony.
Whatever she did, she would end up hurting someone. How could she choose between the people she loved?
The people she loved?
There was no question about it. She loved all three of them. Adam. Her father.
And Cooper.
Oh, yes, she loved this man from his too-long hair to the dimple in his chin, from his bad-boy tattoo to his cowboy boots. She loved him from his tough shell to the tender soul he tried so hard to hide.
She wanted to scream, and she wanted to weep. When had it happened? How? She had fought so hard against it, yet she had been helpless to stop the feelings that had been growing in her heart. How could she not love a man who had shown her time and again the goodness he kept inside and yet could make a joke about being mistaken for a bank robber?
Oh, God.
Now what?
A twisted heap of blackened debris surrounded by yellow police tape was all that was left of the stately old two-story Victorian. The acre of lawn that had surrounded the Tavistock house was blackened with drifts of cinders and gouged in places with ruts from the fire trucks. The maple that had stood at the side of the house had been reduced to a charred trunk and stubby limbs. The ones at the back fence had been far enough away to escape the flames, but their leaves had been seared brown by the heat. The breeze from the park beyond rattled through what was left of them and swirled past the debris pile, bringing with it the lingering taint of smoke.
Hayley stood on the front walk at the edge of the police tape, her sunglasses firmly in place even though the sun was already going down. She lifted her hand toward a point above the right corner of the foundation. “Adam’s room was over there above the veranda when we were growing up. Mine was in the back.”
Cooper looped his arm around her shoulders. She was so tense, she felt brittle.
He hadn’t wanted to bring her here. For one thing, the neighborhood was too close to Sproule’s estate, and Cooper had just asked the guys who had been keeping an eye on the place to pull back. For another, this was the first time Hayley had returned to the house since the fire, and it had to be upsetting. Yet she had been so insistent, he hadn’t been able to refuse. He could see she was working something through in her head.
She had been this way since he had picked her up at the bank today. It worried him, but he hadn’t yet figured out what was going on. There were so many emotions flickering over her face she was difficult to read.
“I used to be scared of thunder when I was young,” she said. “So whenever there was a storm at night, Adam would take me down to the kitchen and make us these huge banana splits. After a while, I forgot about being afraid. Did I tell you that?”
“No.” He rubbed his fingers gently along her upper arm. “You never mentioned it.”
“By the time I was in high school, Adam had moved out of the house because he liked his privacy, but he used to visit regularly. He always brought me presents that my dad used to say were too extravagant, but I adored Adam. I thought he was the best brother in the world.” She inhaled unsteadily. “We drifted apart after I moved away to college.”
“That happens.”
“I didn’t come home as often as I should have. When I did, I spent most of the time with my father. I was always trying to please him, but it never happened.”
Hayley had visited her father at the nursing home this afternoon, as she always did, yet her manner toward him had been different. Ernie had been fully lucid today, his subtle slights toward his daughter as hurtful as ever, yet Hayley hadn’t looked at him with longing. She had appeared more guarded than usual, as if she had been working something through in her head then, too.
“It wasn’t fair, Cooper.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
She stepped away from his touch. Her shoes gritted against some cinders that lay on the sidewalk. She bent down to pick up a piece of broken glass. “I thin
k part of me was jealous of Adam because he was Dad’s favorite. That’s the main reason we drifted apart.”
“That’s understandable.”
“But I didn’t want to admit it.” She straightened up, holding the glass fragment gingerly between her index finger and thumb. “In my mind, Adam could do no wrong. I believed he was the best, just like my father did. You were the first person who made me see that he might not have been that perfect after all.”
Cooper raked his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry for spouting off about him, Hayley. Is that what’s bothering you?”
She twisted to look at him over her shoulder. Her eyes were hidden by her sunglasses but her eyebrows were arched in surprise. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve known all along how strongly you feel about your brother. I shouldn’t have criticized him.”
“You were only being honest, Cooper. You described what he did. A man’s character comes through in his actions. Adam’s did. So does yours. But just because my brother wasn’t perfect doesn’t mean that I don’t love him.” She glanced at the piece of glass she still held, then lobbed it past the police tape. It struck a blackened beam and bounced out of sight in a tangle of pipes. “I promised my father that I would get justice for Adam, but putting Oliver Sproule in prison isn’t going to change anything.”
“What do you mean?”
She waved her hand at the wreckage. “It’s not going to rebuild my mother’s family home or restore my grandfather’s books and my grandmother’s china. It won’t bring Adam back. It’s not going to make my father love me.”
“Hayley—”
“It’s true. I can’t make my father love me if he doesn’t want to. I’ve been clinging to this idea that if only I manage to do this one last thing to please him, I’ll finally make amends for what happened when I was born and everything’s magically going to change. But I don’t have any control over the way I feel, so how could I hope to change him?”
He could see how much the admission was costing her, and part of him wanted to argue just to comfort her, but she was right. It was unlikely that Ernie was going to change, not after so many years. Cooper was glad Hayley had finally recognized that.
She turned to face him squarely. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said to me yesterday, Cooper. It’s time to cut my losses. I want to get on with my life.” She clasped her hands together. “That’s why I’ve decided to quit.”
A sudden gust rattled the trees at the back of the yard. Cooper started. He couldn’t have heard her right. “Did you say you’re quitting?”
“I want to let Sproule go.”
“You what?”
“I don’t want to go through with this. I don’t care if he goes to jail.”
“But we’re getting close, Hayley. That drug shipment Nathan told us about is bound to happen soon.”
“There’s no guarantee of that. It might not happen at all. Even if it does, you realized yourself that Sproule might end up getting a deal so that the authorities can stop Stephan Volski.”
He took her sunglasses from her nose and tipped up her chin. He tried to read her expression, but her emotions were still too confused. “I wouldn’t have gotten this close to Sproule without you, but if you want me to take it from here, it’s okay, I will.”
“That’s not enough. I want you to quit, too, Cooper.”
He stared at her. She couldn’t have meant…
“You have to let him go,” she said. “Please.”
He dropped his hand. “You’re not really asking me to give up, are you? Even with everything I’ve got riding on bringing Sproule to justice?”
She nodded. “It’s too dangerous, Cooper. If we keep chasing Sproule, we’re going to stir up more trouble than we bargained for. People are going to get hurt.”
“I know there’s a risk, especially with Volski and the Russian mob involved, but we’ll be careful. That’s why I brought in the guys for extra security.”
“People are going to get hurt,” she repeated, her tone verging on desperate. “You don’t need to do this. You can walk away.”
“The hell I can. If I walk, I lose everything. You know that.”
“Not everything.”
“I’ll lose my bar, my home and my business. That’s all I have.”
“It’s only a place, Cooper. You’ll be the same person wherever you go. You made it once, you can do it again. Please, you have to give this up.”
He still couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He’d thought she understood how important the Long Shot was to him. After the intimacy they had shared the night before, she knew him better than that, didn’t she?
Or was the sudden worry of hers due to the change in their relationship? She was such a passionate woman, maybe the days of living under the threat of more trouble from Sproule had finally gotten to her and that was why she wanted him to quit. He knew he would do anything in his power to keep her from harm.
He took her hand and led her to where he had parked his pickup beside the curb. “If you’re concerned about the danger, we should go back to the bar. It would be safer than standing out here.”
She retrieved her sunglasses from him and climbed into the truck. Instead of putting them back on, she held them in her lap, opening and closing the arms. She didn’t look back once as they pulled away from the wreckage of her house. She waited until they were most of the way across town before she spoke again. “Could you at least think about it?”
He tried to keep his tone reasonable. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Hayley, but I can’t quit. I have to keep my promise to Tony.”
“No, you don’t. If he takes the Long Shot, we can start again. We can open another place somewhere else.” She stored her sunglasses in her purse and tucked her fingertips beneath her thighs. Cooper recognized the pose—she always sat like that when she was anxious. She spoke quickly. “I’m positive that Pete, Ken and Theresa would come with us. They’re terrific workers and they think the world of you.”
“I’m not going to run scared.”
“Hear me out. I’ve seen your books. Your business plan is solid and your cash flow is steadily improving. You’ve proven that you can succeed. You don’t need Tony. With my connections to regular bankers I can find conventional financing for your new bar.”
He glanced at her. The streetlights had come on while they’d been driving. In the sliding squares of light that moved across her face, her eyes had a sheen of tears. He could see that she was sincere. “You’re saying ‘we’ and ‘us.’”
“I’ll help you, Cooper. I’ll do whatever it takes to rebuild your business.”
“I won’t need to rebuild because I’m not going to lose it.”
“I’m sorry. You have no idea how sorry I am. I know how proud you are of the place, but we’ll manage somehow. I’ve thought this all through and it’s the only way out.”
“You’re not making sense.” He turned onto the road that would take them to the city limits. “If you want to bail, that’s fine. Go ahead and bail, but that’s no reason to ask me to do the same.”
“Yes, it is. We’re partners.”
“Right. To get Sproule.”
She was silent for a while as she chewed her lip. Finally, she took a deep breath and spoke. “I want us to give up on Oliver Sproule, but I don’t want our partnership to end.”
At first, Cooper didn’t want to acknowledge the hope that flashed through him. He knew better than that, didn’t he? His knuckles whitened on the wheel. “Do you mean you want to be business partners?”
“No, that’s not what I mean. I want more than that. I realize we haven’t known each other that long, and neither of us made any promises last night, but I don’t want to leave you, Cooper. I want to stay.”
He hit the brakes so fast the tires squealed. He yanked the wheel and pulled the truck to a stop at the side of the road.
The lights of the Long Shot glowed just around the bend up
ahead. A car honked as it went past. A billboard advertising the local hospital fund-raising drive rose from a vacant lot beside them. Cooper was aware of everything, the whiff of exhaust that rolled in the open window, the rumble of the engine, the sound of a freight train in the distance. Part of his mind remained alert to his surroundings.
Yet the rest of him heard nothing but the echo of Hayley’s words.
She didn’t want to leave him. She wanted to stay.
No, people came and went and only a fool let himself care.
Cooper was finding it hard to breathe. He thought of how Hayley had felt in his arms that morning, and how her presence had filled his life since the night they had met.
And he couldn’t imagine not having her there.
He flexed his fingers and lifted his hands from the wheel to shut off the ignition, then draped his arm over the seat and turned to face her. “You want to stay with me?”
She nodded.
He touched his thumb to her cheek. Her skin was wet. His voice roughened. “I want that too, Hayley. Like I said before, we’re good together.”
“What we have between us isn’t just chemistry.” The confusion that had been swirling through her expression cleared. She brushed her lips across his palm and smiled. “I love you, Cooper.”
Joy, sudden and fierce, slammed through him without warning. It was hard to believe he was really hearing this. It was more than he’d asked for, way more than they had agreed on and a hell of a lot more than he deserved.
But it was what he wanted. Deep down inside him where he knew better than to look, it was what he’d craved since the first time he’d touched her. He’d wanted it so much, he hadn’t dared to put the thought into words.
And yet this woman with the face of an angel and pure honesty shining from her eyes had just spoken the words no one had ever said to him before.
The Angel and the Outlaw Page 18
