From The Ashes (Golden Falls Fire Book 3)

by Scarlett Andrews

  “Not at all,” Jack said. “Nate’s not the bad guy here.”

  The brothers remained quiet on the short walk down the hospital corridor. Thankfully, the waiting area was empty. They sat, and Josh looked at Jack expectantly.

  Jack studied his brother’s face more closely than he’d done in a long while. Josh looked so much like a younger version of their dad—tall, lean, firm jawline, outdoorsy complexion. Jack thought of how much happier Josh had been lately, ever since meeting and starting to date Hayley. He had a new optimism, a new lightness to his step.

  “You’ve got the right to know what’s going on,” Jack said, “But it’s going to be a hard conversation.”

  Josh arched an eyebrow; it was a gesture Jack had been on the receiving end of many times over the years as Josh probed, and Jack refused, to tell him what had caused the rift between Jack and their dad.

  “Is it going to explain why you and Dad can’t be in the same room with each other without nearly coming to blows?”

  “It will,” Jack said.

  “Then it’s a hell of a long time overdue.”

  “I apologize for keeping you in the dark all these years. I can only say I thought it was best for you at the time, what with Mom dying and Dad being the only parental figure you had left, but I’ve regretted every day the distance it’s put between us. You lost Mom. I didn’t want you to lose Dad, too.”

  Josh paled. “Why would I lose Dad?”

  “Because he let us down, the whole family,” Jack said. “He’s the one who taught us right from wrong and kept us on a good path all throughout our childhoods. And I know he’s your hero even to this day, but he stopped being mine right around the time Mom died.”

  “Seriously, Jack, stop with the preamble. What happened all those years ago?”

  Jack’s heart pounded. Here went nothing. Here went everything. “How about stealing half a million dollars and letting Nate Armstrong take the fall for it?”

  A mix of confusion, horror, defiance, and finally obligatory refusal crossed Josh’s face. “No, he couldn’t—he wouldn’t—”

  “He could, and he did,” Jack said. “He stole the cash from the police evidence room to pay for Mom’s cancer treatment, and he let Nate’s reputation get ruined when the money was discovered missing. Nate would never have been investigated for obstruction if the theft didn’t prompt an investigation. I’m not saying Nate wasn’t guilty of the obstruction charge, but Dad was directly responsible for opening that can of worms. Nate lost his wife, his kids, his job, his friends, his pension, and his reputation. He’s finally out of prison, and there’s nothing but hatred for him in this city—his hometown—and all of that is completely Dad’s fault.”

  Josh exhaled heavily, one and then twice. He stared out the second-story window into the void of winter darkness. “How do you know for sure? Did Dad tell you?”

  “He all but told me,” Jack said. “I was a rookie cop at the time, remember? And Mom and Dad were down in Houston for that last chance gene therapy. I was paying the bills back home out of their account, opening their mail to make sure everything got paid on time. I remember the moment like it was yesterday.”

  Jack recollected himself as a kid of nineteen, sitting in his dad’s messy corner of the study, using the brass letter opener he’d always loved, slitting open bill after bill and get-well-soon cards. He’d opened two letters that had made him wonder and made him question. One was a letter from the insurance company denying payment for the experimental cancer treatment his mom was currently undergoing, and the other was a receipt for a cash payment from the hospital in Houston. It was an amount far more substantial than his parents could have saved on their middle-class salaries while raising five kids.

  At the Golden Falls Police Department, the drug money had already been discovered missing from evidence, and the investigation was on the front page of the Gazette every single day. Clyde Harrison was gossiping up a storm in his Grapevine column and fueling rumors about Nate.

  For days after opening that mail, Jack had tried to talk himself out of his suspicion, but ultimately he’d followed his dad’s cop advice to his rookie son to gather the facts and let the evidence tell him what happened. The evidence may have been circumstantial, but it was screaming loud and clear that his dad should have been under suspicion as much as Nate.

  He explained it all to Josh. How he’d taken a few days off from work and flown to Houston to confront Bruce. How he’d asked how exactly they were paying the massive bills for their mom’s cancer treatment. He’d found his mother weak and emaciated, and his father in overwrought desperation, about to lose the woman he’d loved for most of his life. It had been the saddest weekend of his life.

  “He did it out of love, Josh. I’m sure of it, and I know he’s felt awful about it ever since.”

  “He admitted he did it?”

  “Not outright,” Jack said. “He was trying to keep me out of legal liability. He said he refused to compromise me as a cop with any such knowledge, and that if the DA actually charged Nate with stealing the money, he wouldn’t let him take the fall for it. Otherwise, whatever Nate did do, he’d have to pay the price for.”

  “So you don’t know for sure he took it.”

  “He took it, Josh. If you go in there and ask him, he’s not going to lie to you. Not anymore.” He swallowed hard. “Back then, he asked me not to tell Mom, but I had to. And she was horrified, Josh. Absolutely horrified. She begged me not to tell anyone else, no one in town and not you guys, either. How could I say no?” He sighed. “I kept their damn secret, but it took a toll.”

  Josh pressed a palm to his forehead as if a thundering headache had just taken hold. He squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced.

  “I’m sorry you had to hear this,” Jack said softly. “I know how much you love the old guy.”

  Josh opened his eyes and looked at him sideways. Jack saw death in his eyes, the death of his hero. Their dad had once been his hero, too.

  “This is why you cut ties with him.” Josh’s tone was irate. Mad on Jack’s behalf. “For all these years I thought you were the one whose fault it was. We all lost more than just Mom when she died. We lost our family. Our cohesive, crazy, larger-than-life family—and Dad let that happen to save his own ass. He let you bear the burden of it.”

  Jack’s throat ached at the acknowledgment. It was nice to be understood, finally.

  “I wish I could have sucked it up and kept on as if nothing had happened, but I didn’t have it in me,” Jack said. “I felt dirty. Complicit. I didn’t want to ruin anything for the rest of you, but I needed to walk away. I couldn’t look him in the eye anymore. I couldn’t watch him be the great guy when I knew he’d betrayed every value he ever tried to instill in us. I’m sorry I wasn’t emotionally equipped to handle it better, because I’ve missed our family, too, Josh. We truly lost something special.”

  “And we can’t get it back,” Josh said.

  “Maybe we can,” Jack said. “Maybe we’re older now, more mature. More able to see the nuances of life.” He thought of Elizabeth and her great capacity for forgiveness where her own father was concerned. “Maybe we can love him, flaws and all.”

  “Dad stole the money.” Josh shook his head like he still couldn’t believe it. “My father stole half a million dollars.”

  “Yes,” Jack said.

  “I still remember when I stole a candy bar from the gas station down the road, and he busted me and made me go back and confess what I’d done and apologize to the store manager.”

  “Life is full of irony.”

  Josh stood and paced the small waiting area. Jack knew he was adjusting to the new reality, the one where Bruce Barnes was fallible and not the greatest guy in the world. The one where he lay in a hospital bed, his face battered by the man whose life he’d indirectly ruined.

  He turned to Jack. “He’s lucky Nate didn’t kill him.”

  “Yes,” Jack said. “He is.”

  Together they
walked back to Bruce’s hospital room. Bruce was awake, listening to a story Hayley was telling him. Josh stopped just inside the doorway and looked at him, arms crossed. Jack made eye contact with Hayley, tried to give her a warning look, to be prepared for the mood in the room to change.

  “Is it true?” Josh demanded of Bruce. “You stole the money?”

  Bruce glanced at Jack.

  “I told him,” Jack said. “I can’t cover for you anymore. It’s cost me too much. It’s cost me my family, and it’s cost me the woman I love.”

  “What money? What happened?” Hayley asked quietly, going to Josh and putting her hand on his arm. “Babe, are you okay?”

  “I’m not okay.” Josh squeezed Hayley’s hand once, but then pulled his arm away like he couldn’t stand to be touched, to be comforted. He addressed Bruce. “All these years, I thought Jack was a selfish asshole for refusing to talk to you.” He half-laughed, then shook his head, disgusted. “All these years, I thought you were the victim, but Jack was. You put him in an impossible situation and left him there for more than fifteen years! He took it so we all could keep thinking you were a great guy, father of the year! Jack wasn’t the one who let us down. You were, Dad, and now I’m going to be the one who won’t have anything to do with you until you make it right—so make it right. With everyone.”

  Josh grabbed his jacket. “Walk me out?” he said to Hayley, who looked stunned by what had just happened.

  “You’ll fill me in?” she asked.

  “Of course. But then I need to be alone for a while.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Hayley told Jack and Bruce.

  Josh waited for her to join him in the hallway, and as Jack watched the two of them walk off together, he was glad his brother would have Hayley there for him.

  He turned to Bruce.

  “All right, Dad,” he said, firmly but a little sympathetically, too. “Now you’re going to do exactly what I tell you.”

  30

  Later that evening, as Elizabeth sat in her jail cell waiting and unsure of what would happen next, she felt simultaneously angry with Bruce and sorry for the pain he’d suffered at her father’s hands.

  Toward Jack, however, she felt only fury.

  It didn’t matter that he’d intended to come clean about what Bruce had done and the role Jack himself had played. Every day he’d kept quiet was one day too long.

  It didn’t matter that he’d “tried” to keep his distance and “tried” not to cross a line with her—the fact was, he hadn’t kept his distance and he had crossed a line. Nothing would have happened between them had she known the truth, from the first hopeful delivery of Butterfinger cookie dough cheesecake brownies to the passionate night they’d spent together. Theirs was a relationship built on a lie.

  Looking back, she had no idea what was real between them.

  She’d been so sure their meeting was destiny, so sure there was something deep and meaningful between them. Her connection to him was on a soul-level, but what if Jack’s connection to her was only borne of guilt and regret?

  As hard as she tried, sitting for hours on a bare cot with her knees tucked up, Elizabeth couldn’t forgive what Jack had done.

  She nearly drove herself crazy turning things over in her mind. Finally, Theresa Harmon returned, along with Guzman, the female officer who’d arrested Elizabeth at her house.

  “What’s happening?” Elizabeth asked. Her body spiked with sudden adrenaline. The last thing she wanted was to go to a courtroom in handcuffs, stand before a judge, and have to plead guilty to something she didn’t do.

  “They’re releasing you,” Theresa said, raising an eyebrow to indicate she couldn’t quite believe it.

  “Bruce Barnes won’t corroborate that you assaulted him, so we have nothing to hold you on,” said Lieutenant Guzman said as she unlocked Elizabeth’s jail cell. “But don’t leave town because this isn’t over yet. We’re not ruling out charges against you—or anyone else in your family.”

  Guzman gave her a withering look, and Elizabeth gave her one back.

  “Bruce Barnes stole that drug money from the evidence room all those years ago, not my dad,” Elizabeth snapped. After years of tolerating such rudeness, she was done with it.

  “Right,” said Lieutenant Guzman. “As if I’d ever believe that.”

  Right then, Elizabeth knew that unless Bruce publicly came clean, no one would believe what had happened. That was how much people respected Bruce, and how much they hated Nate.

  “You can apologize to me later,” Elizabeth said, vowing that she would force Bruce to admit what he’d done in as public a manner as possible. He could issue a public apology to Nate while he was at it—and to her and Emmett, too.

  “Elizabeth, let me walk you out,” Theresa said. To Lieutenant Guzman, she added, “I have a few questions for you, so I’ll be right back.”

  In the lobby of the jail, Theresa placed her hand on Elizabeth’s arm.

  “Listen, you have to be careful,” she said. “I don’t trust that one of you won’t be charged for this still—Bruce Barnes is revered around here, and the police are going to want justice for one of their own. You need to make sure your dad and brother keep their heads down for the next few days. Don’t even answer the front door unless it’s the cops with a warrant. We don’t want any surprises or retribution, right? It won’t take long for people to figure you couldn’t possibly have been the one who assaulted Bruce, and that leaves Nate in a precarious position.”

  “I guess he needs to go to Anchorage sooner rather than later.”

  “If no one’s told him not to leave town, then that’s not a bad idea.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Elizabeth was ready to leave but had to ask, “Could Jack go to prison for his role in the theft? For knowing—or suspecting—or whatever?”

  “No,” Theresa said. “The statute of limitations has long passed, for Jack and even for Bruce.”

  “So they got away with it.”

  “They won’t serve time in prison.” Theresa shrugged. “That doesn’t mean they got away with it. I have no doubt there will be repercussions. Jack could lose his job.”

  It felt as if all the blood rushed from Elizabeth’s head just then, because she imagined a pale-faced Jack packing up his locker at the fire department, leaving in shame, losing his income and his pension, and, most of all, the respect of his friends and colleagues. She saw a “For Sale” sign next to the Caribou Vacation Cabins sign, all of his hard work for nothing. A fresh swell of tears filled her eyes.

  As angry as she was with Jack, Elizabeth could hardly bear the idea of him living in shame like she herself had for so many years.

  “I should get back,” Theresa said. “After I finish up here, I’ll head over to your house and update Nate and Emmett. Is that where you’re going now?”

  “I don’t know.” Elizabeth sighed. Managing her father’s righteous anger was about the last thing she wanted to do just then. “Maybe. I can tell you where I won’t be—at the cabin on Jack’s property.”

  “It’s not really Jack’s fault, you know,” Theresa said. “My understanding is that Bruce was careful not to implicate Jack. There was no proof for him to present to anyone.”

  Elizabeth scowled. She didn’t want to hear any extenuating circumstances for Jack. “He still could have brought his suspicions to light.”

  “Yes,” Theresa said. “Morally, he had that duty. Legally, with no evidence and no admission of guilt, he didn’t. I admit it’s a gray area. But with everything going on in his personal life at the time, there was no way he could truly think straight.”

  “What about every day since?” Elizabeth retorted. “What about every week, every year, every decade since? I understand that he lost his mom—heck, I lost my mom from all this, too. My mom and my dad. And yet I still manage to think straight. I still manage not to ruin an innocent family through sheer selfishness.” Even as she said it, she realized it was perhaps a bit of misplaced bla
me—it was Bruce who was culpable. But with Jack it was so much more personal, so much more of a blow to her heart and her happiness, that she couldn’t help thinking of him as just as guilty.

  As Elizabeth stepped out into the frigid winter evening, she thought the world had never seemed so cruel as it did right then—and then she saw Hayley March dashing up the stairs of the jail, wearing a cheerful blue wool coat but looking anything but cheerful.

  “There you are!” Hayley grabbed her in a fierce hug. “Let’s get you out of this awful place. Let’s get you home.”

  Elizabeth realized she didn’t know where that was anymore.

  A short time later, Elizabeth stepped inside Hayley’s second-story apartment and let herself be wrapped in her friend’s comforting arms—at which point, she promptly burst into tears.

  “Shhh,” Hayley said, patting her back. “Let it all out. You’re safe now.”

  “Thank you so much for coming to get me,” Elizabeth said through her sniffles. “I was feeling so alone, and … well, your kindness means so much.”

  “Of course.” Hayley helped her off with her coat. “Josh needed some time alone to process things—he does that, he’s my lone wolf—and after I heard what happened I figured you could use some moral support, so I headed to the police station after the hospital.”

  “You’re unbelievably sweet, Hayley,” said Elizabeth. “I don’t deserve a friend like you.”

  “Don’t talk crazy,” Hayley said. “You’re the sweet one, always taking care of everyone before yourself. I feel horrible for you right now on so many levels. You don’t deserve any of this.”

  Elizabeth clung to Hayley’s words like a woman drowning. It said something that she needed someone else to tell her she didn’t deserve what was happening. Although logically she knew she wasn’t responsible for her father’s actions, she’d gone through much of her life believing she deserved any bad thing that happened to her—it was just the nature of guilt-by-association.