The Smoky Mountain Mist

by Paula Graves

  “I’m not lying about this,” he told her. But listening to his low, urgent tone, he could see why the doubt didn’t immediately clear from her eyes. He sounded desperate and scared.

  Because he was.

  “He’s not in his office,” Ivy told them a moment later. “The person who answered said he’d taken a few days off and was out of pocket.”

  Seth frowned. Brand hadn’t said anything to him about going on vacation. In fact, in all the time he’d been dealing with Brand, the man hadn’t taken more than a day or two off at a time.

  “He never goes on vacation,” Delilah murmured, echoing his own thoughts.

  “Why don’t we go down to the station and sort through all of this?” Ivy suggested in a calm, commanding tone. Seth looked at her thoughtfully, remembering when she’d been a snot-nosed little brat who’d followed him and Sutton all over Smoky Ridge. She’d grown up, he realized, into a tough little bird.

  He looked at Rachel again. Her eyes were on Delilah, her expression pensive. Seth followed her gaze and saw his sister staring at him with blazing hope rather than doubt.

  She believed him, he realized with astonishment. “We’ll keep calling,” Delilah said quietly.

  Sutton, however, was having none of it. “What’s the point? You really think the FBI’s going to hire a con man to keep tabs on a grieving heiress? That’s like assigning an alligator to guard the pigpen.”

  Seth turned to look at Rachel. Her eyes had gone reflective. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, and that scared him to death. “Rachel—”

  “Are you going to take him in?” She turned her cool gaze to Ivy.

  Ivy nodded. “Yeah. I am.”

  Seth looked from Sutton’s stony face to Ivy’s. “You gonna cuff me?”

  Ivy’s left eyebrow peaked. “Is it going to be necessary?”

  He was tempted to make it so. Go out in a blaze, since it’s what everyone seemed to expect of him.

  But he simply shook his head. “Let’s get this over with.”

  He looked back as he walked out of the door, hoping to catch Rachel’s eye and try one last time to make her see that he was telling the truth.

  But she had turned away, her cell phone to her ear.

  He trudged down the porch steps, feeling suddenly dead to the core.

  * * *

  RACHEL STOOD BENEATH the hot shower spray, her mind racing. She’d never been a woman of impulse, heedless of warning signs. Even as a child, she’d been a rule follower, thanks to her father, who’d always explained the reasons behind his strictures in ways she could understand.

  Logic told her she should be down there at the police station right now, demanding that Seth explain his lies and machinations. But she just couldn’t believe any of the allegations against him.

  She knew all the reasons she should, of course. Though nobody had showed her any pictures, she didn’t doubt they existed. Ivy Hawkins was a cop with no reason to lie. And even Seth’s own sister had said she’d seen the photos.

  But that didn’t mean Seth had been doing something to hurt her. He’d told her he was working for the FBI, and she’d believed him. If he was following her on the orders of the mysterious Adam Brand, it made sense he might use covert surveillance equipment to do so.

  She’d called the trucking company as soon as Ivy Hawkins had made it clear she was taking Seth in for questioning, wondering if there was any sort of fund available from the company to help employees with legal problems. But their lawyer had been doubtful. “What you’re describing doesn’t sound as if it’s connected to the employee’s work at the company,” Alice Barton had told her. “He wouldn’t qualify.”

  She’d known the legal fund idea was a long shot, but she had a feeling Seth might have been more open to accepting her help if it came from the company instead of her own resources. No matter. She was going to figure out a way to help him whether he liked it or not.

  Out of the shower, she dressed quickly, letting her hair air dry as she pondered what to do next. She needed to see the photos, she realized. See the so-called evidence against Seth. There might be something in those photos that could clue her in to who was really trying to destroy her life.

  Before Delilah had dropped her off at her car the day after the Purgatory Bridge incident, she’d given Rachel her business card with her cell phone number. Where had she put it?

  She was digging through the drawers of her writing desk, looking for the card, when there was another insistent knock on the door. Distracted, she almost opened the door without looking through the peephole. She stopped at the last moment and took a peek.

  It was her stepbrother, Paul.

  Relaxing, she opened the door. “Oh. Hi.”

  He pushed past her into the house. He looked around, as if he expected to find someone else there with her. “Are you okay?”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, closing the door behind them.

  “I just got a call from Jim Hallifax at the locksmith’s place down the street from the office. He said you were changing the locks here because you’d had an incident with an intruder.”

  She stared at him, confused. “Why on earth would Jim Hallifax call you about that?”

  Paul stared back at her a moment, looking a little sheepish. “I, uh, mentioned in passing that you were taking your father’s death badly and that I was worried about you being here all alone. I guess he thought I’d want to know that you’d had some trouble.”

  She shook her head. “He had no business telling you that.”

  “Are you angry that I know?”

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “No. But I’m fine. Really.” At least, she had been while Seth was there. Now that she was alone, however, she felt vulnerable again.

  “You shouldn’t stay here alone. I could move in for a little while, at least until the locks are changed.”

  “I’m getting an alarm put in, too,” she assured him. “Dad resisted it forever, but I just don’t think it’s safe to live here without some form of protection.”

  The phone rang, interrupting whatever Paul was going to say in response. For a second, Rachel thought it might be Seth, but she realized he’d have called her cell phone. She let it ring, not in the mood to talk to anyone else at the moment. The machine would pick up the message.

  “Call from Brantley’s Garage,” the mechanized voice drifted in from the hallway where the phone was located. Rachel frowned, trying to remember why Brantley’s Garage would be calling. As the message beep sounded, she remembered. Seth’s car with the flat tires. They’d given Brantley her phone number in case he couldn’t be reached by his cell.

  She didn’t reach the phone before the caller started leaving a message. “Mr. Hammond, this is Wally from Brantley’s Garage. Your car is ready to pick up.”

  She grabbed the phone. “Wally, Mr. Hammond isn’t here, but I’ll be sure he gets the message. Thanks.” Bracing herself, she hung up the phone and turned to look at her stepbrother.

  He stared at her, his expression disbelieving. “Why would the garage call here to reach Seth Hammond?”

  “Because he was staying here with me.”

  Paul stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Why?”

  She sighed, realizing she was going to have to tell someone everything that had happened, sooner or later. There was no point in trying to hide from her choices any longer. She’d made them, and if they turned out to be mistakes, she’d have to live with them, because she had no intention of apologizing.

  “It’s a long story,” she said. “And it started a couple of nights ago on Purgatory Bridge.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Are you charging me with something?” Seth blurted before Ivy Hawkins and Antoine Parsons asked the first question.

 
; “Should we?” Ivy asked.

  “Charge me or let me go,” he said flatly.

  “We can hold you for twenty-four hours without charging you for anything,” Antoine said in a quiet tone. “I’d rather not do either, frankly. I’d like to believe you’ve gotten your act together, because I remember you as being an okay guy back in the day, before all that mess went down with your dad and you got sucked into Cleve Calhoun’s world.”

  So, Seth thought, Parsons gets to be the good cop. He looked at Ivy, who was watching him with thoughtful eyes. “I’ve told you everything. Meanwhile, Rachel Davenport is home alone at a house that’s been broken into at least once, after over a month of incidents targeting her and the people around her. Including five murders.”

  “Why did the FBI want you to keep an eye on Rachel Davenport?” Antoine asked.

  “Adam Brand didn’t say. All he told me was that it wasn’t an official FBI inquiry.”

  “Was that unusual?”

  “Never happened before,” he admitted.

  “And you didn’t question the order?” Ivy interjected.

  “Of course I did. But look—Adam Brand’s an FBI agent, which means he’s a secretive guy by default. He tells me only what he thinks I need to know in order to do the job he gives me. I didn’t need to know why I was keeping an eye on Rachel.”

  “You weren’t even curious?” Ivy sounded doubtful.

  “Honestly? I didn’t care. I was already keeping an eye on Rachel before he called.” He gave her a pointed look. “But you already know that.”

  He saw Antoine slant a quick look at Ivy and realized the pretty little police detective apparently hadn’t done much talking with her partner about Seth’s part in bringing down serial killer Mark Bramlett. He supposed she might not have had time to tell him much before the police department put her on administrative leave.

  “I certainly didn’t know you were stalking her,” Ivy denied.

  “I’m not stalking her,” he protested, though he supposed that an outside observer might think so. He’d been spending many of his off-work hours keeping an eye on Rachel Davenport and the people around her, ever since he’d started putting two and two together about the serial killer victims, all of whom had shared a connection with Rachel.

  “You’ve been following her. Taking photos of her. Insinuating yourself in her life. Know what that sounds like to me?” she asked.

  “Like a con man picking out a new mark,” he answered.

  She looked a little surprised to hear him say it out loud. “Then you see the issue I have with your story.”

  “And here’s the issue I have with the way your department has handled this investigation,” he snapped back. “It took four murders before you’d so much as admit in public you were looking for a serial killer. And it took you longer still to tie all four people to Rachel Davenport.”

  “You knew earlier?” Antoine asked with a slight rise of one dark brow.

  “Y’all never step foot into any of the beer joints around these parts, do you?” He shook his head. “You like to sit here in your nice, clean police station and pretend there’s not any crime in these parts, not like there is in the big city, even though these hills are full of desperate, poor people. That’s why someone can offer twenty grand to kill someone and you’ll never hear a word of it, because you’re too scared to get down in the dirt where the bad guys wallow.”

  Antoine looked surprised. But not Ivy. Because she was sleeping with Sutton Calhoun, of course. They were talking marriage and babies and the whole sappy lot, from what Seth had heard. Of course, Sutton had told her what Seth had told him about the twenty-grand hit he’d heard about.

  “Sutton told me about that,” Ivy said quietly. She gave Antoine an apologetic look. “I should have told you. I’m sorry. It was only hearsay, and Sutton didn’t know who Seth had talked to.”

  “It would have helped with our investigation,” he said. “You want to tell us who told you?”

  “The guy’s nowhere around these parts anymore. He got out of town not long after that happened. I don’t even know his real name. Just the name he went by when we crossed paths now and then. Calls himself Luke, but he’s fast to tell you it’s short for Lucifer, because he’s a fallen angel.” Seth grimaced. “My theory, he’s some poor preacher’s black sheep son. His mama probably prays for him every night and cries about him every day.”

  “What did Luke tell you, exactly?” Antoine asked.

  “That he had been offered a hit job.”

  “And you didn’t think to mention this to us before now?”

  “Luke didn’t take the job, and if you snatched him up, he’d know I was the one who told. I might need information from him in the future.”

  Ivy’s brow furrowed. “Information for what?”

  “Anything. Everything.” Seth leaned forward. “You don’t know what it’s like living outside proper society, do you? Sure, your mama’s got a bit of a reputation for bringing home deadbeats, but people mostly understood that was just because she wanted someone to love her. They may not have approved, and I’m sure some of them thought she was stupid, but nobody ever thought she was a bad person.”

  Ivy gave a slight nod.

  “Right now, I can’t depend on society to see me as anything but trouble. And I’m not lookin’ for sympathy when I say that—I know I brought on my own troubles. But it doesn’t change my situation. There are times when I have to depend on people you wouldn’t want to be seen with. Hell, I don’t want to be seen with ’em, not anymore, because it makes it that much harder for me to try to fit in with good people.” He shook his head. “But my opinion of what constitutes good people and bad people can be a little fluid.”

  He saw a hint of sympathy in Ivy’s dark eyes. “Did you press Luke about who tried to hire him?”

  “Not at the time. I hadn’t connected it to the Davenports then. I was trying to keep my nose clean, stay out of messes, and I didn’t want to know anything more.” He felt a sharp pang of guilt. “If I’d pushed a little harder, maybe I could have stopped it. But I just wanted to stay clear of trouble.”

  “You should have told us,” Antoine agreed. “Do you have any idea how to find this Luke person again?”

  “I tried to find him a few weeks ago, but he wasn’t anywhere around. I talked to some mutual acquaintances and they told me Luke had gone to Atlanta for a while to see if he could get any work down there.”

  “What kind of work did he do?”

  Seth shot Antoine a pointed look.

  “The kind of work you used to do?”

  “Yeah, he runs cons when he can. If you can get your hands on Atlanta area mug shots from bunco arrests in the past three weeks, I could maybe pick him out of a lineup.”

  “We’ll look into that,” Ivy said. “Meanwhile, there’s the issue of the photos you took of the funeral.”

  “I told you what that was about.”

  “And conveniently, your so-called contact at the FBI is out of pocket.”

  “Not very damned convenient for me,” Seth disagreed. “And how many times do we have to go back over this same ground? You do realize you’ve left Rachel Davenport by herself, unprotected, in order to chase me around in circles for no good reason?”

  Ivy and Antoine exchanged looks. As if they’d reached a silent agreement, Antoine got up and exited the interview room, leaving Ivy alone with Seth.

  “Where’s he going?”

  “He’ll get someone to check on Ms. Davenport.”

  “Look, Ivy—Detective.” He couldn’t help but make a little face as he corrected himself, a picture in his mind of Ivy Hawkins as a snub-nosed thirteen-year-old with shaggy hair, skinned knees and a crooked grin. It was hard to take her seriously as a police officer when he’d known her as a tagalong for so many years
. “I know why you have to bring me in and ask me these questions. I’m trying to be patient and cooperative. I am. But you and Sutton painted a really bad picture of me for Rachel. I’ve been trying to help her, not hurt her. And it’s got to be hard for her to trust anyone, especially someone like me—”

  Ivy’s eyes widened. “Oh my God. Are you involved with her?”

  He sat back in consternation.

  “Oh my God.” Ivy sat back, too, staring across the table at him through widened eyes. “What exactly did we interrupt this afternoon?”

  He made himself as opaque as he could and didn’t answer.

  “Oh my God.”

  “Will you please stop saying that?” he asked.

  Ivy brought her hand up to her mouth, covering it as if it were the only way to keep from blurting out her shock again. The resulting image would have been comical if Seth hadn’t been so worried.

  A knock on the door drew Ivy out of her seat. A uniformed officer told her something, and she turned to Seth. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  “Is something up?”

  “I’ll be back in a minute.” Ivy left the interview room, closing the door behind her.

  Seth put his head in his hands, frustrated by the delay. Rachel probably thought the worst of him right now. And who could blame her? He’d kept things secret, as usual, not trusting her with the full measure of truth. He talked a good game about trying to earn her trust, but when it came right down to it, he hadn’t trusted her enough to be completely honest.

  And now, he had to pay for it. He just prayed Rachel didn’t have to pay for it, as well. Because she’d already been alone in that house for too long, without anyone to protect her from whoever wanted to do her harm.

  * * *

  “YOU SHOULD HAVE told me about all of this.” Paul gave Rachel a stern look softened slightly by the sympathy in his brown eyes. “Why did you try to go through all of this alone?”

  “I wasn’t alone.”