by LENA DIAZ,
Even if there had been no baggage between them, he didn’t know if they’d ever be able to move past something far more tangible—his scars. The young man she’d made love with all those years ago wasn’t the man standing before her today. And that was something they might never be able to overcome.
After she disappeared up the stairs, he pulled out his phone and sat down to call his father. Although Duncan had already broken the news to their parents that Peyton had come back—and had stirred up Colin’s life again—Colin had put off making the same call. He knew there’d be no way to avoid telling them about getting shot once they started asking questions. Then he’d have to spend a good amount of time groveling for not telling them about it, even though he hadn’t been seriously hurt and hadn’t wanted to alarm them. Once he finished groveling, he’d have to answer even more personal questions, questions he wasn’t prepared to answer. But if he was going to help Peyton get the answers that she needed about her mom, that conversation could no longer be avoided.
A quick look at his watch had him hesitating. His father was a night owl. But eleven thirty was late, even for him. Still, there was a chance he might still be up. Colin decided to risk it.
An hour later, he felt like he’d just gotten out of a boxing ring after twelve rounds and a knockout punch. Both of his parents had ended up on the call, tag-teaming each other in the interrogation like the pros they once were, when she’d been a prosecutor and he was a federal judge. In order to be forgiven for not keeping them in the loop about being shot, he’d had to promise to come up to their cabin for dinner for the next five consecutive Fridays, plus go to church with his mom on two Sundays of her choosing. The sacrifice had been worth it. Because in return, his father was giving him exactly what he’d asked for.
The part of the discussion about Brian’s escape had been the easy part. His parents knew how law enforcement worked. They knew not to push for any nonpublic information—which was pretty much just that four escaped convicts had killed a Memphis police officer and were on the run in the Gatlinburg area.
As for the heinous killings of three of those fugitives, so far Landry had been able to keep that out of the media. He hoped to keep it quiet until after the killer was caught. Colin readily agreed. Peyton certainly didn’t need to have that gruesome detail in her head, and he had no intention of telling her. Some burdens were better not shared.
He stood, stretched and was about to round the coffee table to head to his room when one of the papers caught his attention—the police report on the single-car accident that had claimed the life of Peyton’s mother. Thinking about the irony that she’d been killed so soon after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, he picked up the report and skimmed it.
It had been a rainy night. The roads were wet. Her car had lost control on a curve and slammed into a tree. The gas tank had been punctured, and the vehicle burst into flames. The body was burned beyond recognition. Her father had had her remains cremated and Peyton said they’d sprinkled her ashes within sight of the prison walls where Brian was being held. It had been an unusual request in her mother’s will and Peyton hadn’t wanted to comply. But her father had insisted that they follow her wishes. She’d adored her son and that was her way of being close to him.
He scrubbed his jaw and slowly sat back down.
Cars bursting into flames were common in action movies. But in reality, even in severe crashes, it was rare. Thankfully, so were sorority house fires, especially fatal ones. What had Peyton said earlier tonight about her mom? That she’d always had candles lit around the house, and a fire in the fireplace, even in the middle of summer. Peyton had called it an unhealthy fascination with fire.
A terrible suspicion struck him. He immediately discarded it as ludicrous, the kind of fantastical scheme that might appear in a movie.
Like a car exploding into flames?
He scooted forward and rummaged through the papers on the coffee table until he found the life insurance policy he’d seen earlier. Mrs. Sterling’s death certificate was stapled to the policy. Grabbing it, he jogged to his office down the back hallway.
Twenty minutes later, he had the autopsy report on Molly Sterling sitting on the computer screen in front of him—and even more questions. Dozens of internet searches later, and a promise to give his next Tennessee Vols basketball home game ticket to a police officer working the night desk in Memphis, he had the phone number that he needed. And he wasn’t about to wait until morning to make the call. If this incredibly remote, insane theory panned out, he needed to get that information to the marshals and Chief Landry, immediately.
He pulled out his phone and made the call. After five rings, it went to voice mail. He didn’t leave a message. He hung up and called again, and again, and again. On the fifth try, the phone was answered on the first ring.
“What the hell do you want?” the sleepy voice demanded.
“Dr. Afton, sorry to wake you at this ridiculous hour. But this is extremely important. My name is—”
“I’m going to hang up and you’re not going to call me back. Instead, you’re going to call the medical examiner who’s on call, which is not me.”
“If you hang up, I will call you back. Like I said, I’m—”
“And I’ll call 911 and report that someone’s harassing—”
“If someone has metastatic cancer with tumors in the liver and brain, would that show up in an autopsy if the body was burned in a fire?”
The phone was silent for so long that Colin had to check to see whether the call had dropped. “Dr. Afton?”
“Who is this?”
Colin sighed. “I’ve been trying to tell you that I’m Deputy US Marshal Colin McKenzie. I’m assisting in the hunt for a wanted fugitive, Brian Sterling. While working that case, some questions came up that—”
“Wait, did you say Sterling?”
“I did.”
“Any relation to Molly Sterling?”
“Brian is her son.” Colin waited, but the line went silent again. “Dr. Afton?”
A loud sigh sounded through the phone. “I knew cutting corners would come back to bite me.”
Colin straightened in his chair. “Cutting corners?”
“Give me five minutes. I’ll call you back.” The line clicked.
Chapter Eighteen
Peyton stepped off the bottom stair and paused when she saw her book bag sitting by the couch where she’d left it last night. Inside were the letters Colin had written her all those years ago. She’d meant to put the bag in her room until later, when the timing was better for a lengthy, extremely personal talk. Had he looked inside? Seen the letters?
“Morning.” He rounded the corner from the hall behind the stairs holding a cup of coffee.
“Morning. I guess I owe you an apology for last night.”
He stopped in front of her. “Why?”
“I shouldn’t have left a mess in here. I should have picked up all my papers and photo albums.” She glanced toward the coffee table—the now empty coffee table. “I guess you put them up for me somewhere?”
He followed her glance. “Oh. I took them to my office last night after you went to bed. I wanted to research a few things and didn’t want to risk making too much noise out here.” He motioned toward the book bag sitting in the floor. “I wasn’t sure what you had in the bag and whether you wanted me to see it, so I left it alone.”
Her cheeks heated. “Yes, well, it’s nothing that I want to go into just yet. I’m guessing your research was about whatever you hinted at last night. Should we go to your office so you can show me what you found?” She stepped in that direction but he stopped her with a hand on her arm.
“That’s not where you’ll find what I was hinting at last night. We need to take a little drive.”
“A drive?”
“About forty minutes, not far. I see you’re showered
and ready to start the day. Any objections to grabbing breakfast at a drive-through in town and hitting the road right now? Coffee’s ready in the kitchen. You can take a mug with you.”
“Have they...have they found Brian? Are we going to the police station?”
“Unfortunately, no. Let’s get you some coffee and I’ll explain on the way.”
“Sounds like you’re worried that I won’t go if I know the destination ahead of time.”
He gave her a crooked grin that made him look so young, her heart hurt.
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. But you’ll thank me later. Eventually. Maybe.”
“Gee, you make it sound so appealing.”
“Then you’ll go?”
“Against my better judgment, I’ll go.”
* * *
“YOU’RE TAKING ME WHERE?”
Colin winced and glanced at a red-faced Peyton glaring at him from the passenger seat of his truck. Thankfully he’d waited until she finished her fast-food sandwich before he broke the news. Otherwise, she’d have probably thrown it at him.
Her jaw set, she stared out the window as if judging the speed of the truck.
He hit the automatic door locks.
She rolled her eyes. “Really? You think I’m stupid enough to jump?”
“Angry enough, maybe.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Angry isn’t the right word. I’m...terrified. That they’ll hate me. It’s been ten years, Colin. After what my family has done to your family, after what I’ve done to you—”
“Hey, hey. You haven’t done anything to me. Let that guilt go right now.”
“You were burned. I wasn’t there for—”
“Yeah, well. That’s a discussion for another day, for you and me. Not you, me and my parents. It’s none of their business. And this isn’t a casual visit to reminisce and take a trip down memory lane either. It’s a quest for the truth. So we can put all of this business behind us and get back to that conversation you and I need to have. Alone. All right?”
She leaned toward him and put her hand on his thigh. “All right. Thank you, Colin. I don’t think I could have survived everything that’s been happening if it weren’t for you.”
He swallowed and tried not to think about her warm hand sliding across his leg, or anywhere else. Out of desperation, he subtly shifted toward the door and she pulled her hand back.
“We’ll get through this together,” he said. “No worries.”
She watched the trees passing by the window as he turned onto the narrow road that led up the last part of the mountain to his family home.
“I don’t understand how going to see your parents is going to help with my quest for answers.”
“People don’t call Dad the Mighty McKenzie for nothing.”
“I thought you didn’t like that name. You felt it was derogatory.”
He shrugged. “Depends on who’s saying it, and their tone. It can be. On the other hand, it denotes a certain authority and respect within the legal community. During Brian’s trial, your family resented my dad because even though he wasn’t assigned to the case, he always seemed to know what was going on. Things pretty much went his way—which means my way, as a witness and, technically, a victim since I was burned.”
Her glance flicked to his hands, then away. “Okay, and that will help us now, how?”
“Brian’s case was important to Dad, for two reasons. Me. And you.”
“Me? I don’t understand.”
He slowed for a particularly sharp curve. Once he was on a straightaway again, he glanced at her. “Don’t you know, Peyton? I wasn’t the only one who loved you back then. You were like a daughter to Mom and Dad. In the beginning, even with me telling them I saw Brian with that gas can, they did everything they could to prove he was innocent. Because he was your brother, because they wanted to help you.”
She pressed a hand to her throat. “I never knew they tried to help.”
“It wasn’t like they were proud of it. In their eyes, they’d failed you. They felt there was nothing they could do for you after that, so they had to fully focus on getting me well and helping me through the ordeal of the trial.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Getting you well. Colin, when you were burned, you actually wrote me sweet, wonderful, old-fashioned letters—”
“Stop.”
She looked at him. “What?”
“We can talk about that later, okay? Let’s focus on the case first.”
She seemed like she wanted to argue, but she finally nodded. “Of course. Okay. I’m sorry.”
He held out his hand toward her. She immediately threaded her fingers through his. He rested them on the seat between them.
“What I was trying to explain in my own clumsy way is that Dad maintained a thick file on Brian’s case. It’s obviously not the official case file, but it has copies of everything he could get his hands on. And more. He even hired a private investigator to see what he could find.”
“I’ve seen the official case file, read transcripts even though I was there through the trial,” she said. “I don’t see how a file your father maintained, even with notes from a private investigator, would help answer my questions about my mom.”
“Time stamps.”
“What?”
He turned the truck down the last curve. The family cabin loomed in the distance, two stories of thick log walls perched on the edge of one of the highest peaks in the Smoky Mountains west of Gatlinburg.
“Pictures,” he said, as he urged his truck up the last fifty yards of steep grade. “Dad has tons and tons of pictures from the dance, the paths, the waterfalls and the barn. He had the PI buy copies of every single picture he could get from nearly everyone who was there that night. I imagine he has way more pictures than either the prosecutor or the defense ever had.”
He pulled the truck to a stop in one of the parking spaces his parents had paved for their large family. “No one ever suspected your mom. Ever. There wasn’t any reason to. So no one, to my knowledge, has ever tried to create a timeline from those pictures to prove where she was at different times that evening.”
Peyton chewed her bottom lip, her hand tightening on his as she stared up at the cabin. “You really think enough of the pictures have dates and times on them to be of any use? I don’t remember setting dates and times very often on my pictures when I was younger.”
He squeezed her hand and let go so he could get out of the truck, but he hesitated after popping open the door. “You underestimate the Mighty McKenzie. He had the PI print pictures from the actual photo cards in each camera, and write the dates and times from the metadata from those cards onto the back of each picture. That way, all of them have time stamps. And they should all be accurate.”
For the first time in a long time, she gave him a smile that reached her eyes. “It will be such a relief to know, one way or the other. Thank you.” Her gaze slid to the cabin. “It hasn’t changed much over the years. It’s still...huge.”
He laughed. “I suppose it is. They needed a lot of space for four boys to run around. Mom had the kitchen renovated a few years ago, had new beams put in to carry the weight of the second story so she could have a wall knocked down. Open concept and all that. There might be a few new pieces of furniture here and there. But overall, it’s pretty much the same.”
He hopped down from the truck and headed around to her side. After opening the door, he reached in to help her down. Her soft hands gripped his shoulders like a lifeline. It was then that he saw the fear in her eyes and realized the depth of her concern over the reception she’d receive from his parents.
“It will be okay.” He tried to reassure her. “I promise.” She was so tiny compared to him. He couldn’t help grinning when he lifted her down and set her on her feet.
She frowned up at him
as if reading his mind. “No short jokes.”
“No tall jokes.”
She blinked, then laughed. “Deal.”
He kept her hand tightly in his and led her to the door. It opened as soon as they got there, which told him his mother had been watching for them. She stood in the opening, smiling through her tears as she engulfed Peyton in a tight hug.
“Welcome home, daughter,” she said, still holding Peyton in her arms. “We’ve missed you so much.”
Tears were streaming down Peyton’s face when Colin’s mother finally let her go. Peyton gave him a helpless look, obviously not sure what to do. But his mother was already taking charge, grabbing Peyton’s hand and tugging her into the house.
“Come along, Peyton. Dad’s waiting in his office. Let’s get all of that business stuff out of the way so we can chat about that lovely store of yours downtown. Peyton’s Place, right? I was there yesterday. Just adorable. Love the croissants.”
Colin imagined that Peyton wasn’t looking forward to that conversation, to telling his mother that the store belonged to someone else now. His mother never slowed, pulling her through the family room toward the opposite end of the house. Peyton glanced at Colin over her shoulder, a bemused expression on her face.
He grinned and nodded his encouragement. The tears had stopped. And he’d be eternally grateful to his mother for her warm welcome of Peyton. It was exactly what she’d needed. But then, his mother always seemed to know what everyone needed.
She stopped at the open door to Colin’s father’s office, her arm around Peyton’s shoulders. “William, get over here and welcome our daughter home.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” his father called out.
Colin stopped behind Peyton, not quite touching, but close enough so that he knew she’d be able to feel his warmth, know he was there for her no matter what.
He needn’t have worried.
As soon as his father stopped in front of her and opened his arms, she let out a sob and stepped into his embrace.
