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Cold Case Affair
Loreth Anne White
Cold Case Affair
Loreth Anne White
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Table of Contents
Cover (#u2dfd1e83-747d-5b30-86f6-138556684590)
Title Page (#ubb65e51f-0d32-560e-a27a-2899e9adf69f)
About the Author (#ulink_948618e3-6dd7-56f0-83f6-157174691343)
Dedication (#u643ceb32-8565-541b-8403-c85fb9afe219)
Prologue (#ulink_8be4f37f-dd0c-5720-a8a2-9e5514a1be97)
Chapter One (#ulink_48b73c35-7d3f-5ae6-82db-acbd9a3361f2)
Chapter Two (#ulink_78733824-63c1-5186-b274-ef758bc735ab)
Chapter Three (#ulink_2cd577e0-2d99-5bec-be1a-d866643ea5c3)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#ulink_e7d54a93-9bc0-5c2d-ab5e-ec805750e542)
LORETH ANNE WHITE was born and raised in southern Africa, but now lives in Whistler, a ski resort in the moody british Columbian Coast Mountain range. It’s a place of vast wilderness, larger-than-life characters, epic adventure, and romance—the perfect place to escape reality. It’s no wonder she was inspired to abandon a sixteen-year career as a journalist to escape into a world of romantic fiction filled with dangerous men and adventurous women.
When she’s not writing you will find her long-distance running, biking or skiing on the trails, and generally trying to avoid the bears—albeit not very successfully.
She calls this work, because it’s when the best ideas come. For a peek into her world visit her website, www.lorethannewhite.com. She’d love to hear from you.
Dear Reader,
How far would you go to keep a secret? Are some secrets better left buried, or does truth liberate, always? And at what point, exactly, does a secret between two people who care for each other start becoming a lie by omission?
These are questions my heroine, Muirinn O’Donnell, must confront when she returns to her childhood home, where the secret of her father’s murder—and her grandfather’s death—lies buried deep in an abandoned mine, and in the psyche of a small Alaskan coastal town.
To find the truth, she has no choice but to turn to Jett Rutledge, the man she has always loved, but couldn’t have. And in unearthing the dark and terrible truths of their shared past, Muirinn and Jett must in turn reveal their own deep secrets—secrets that both bind and divide—and fight for a second chance.
But will a killer give them time?
Loreth Anne White
For Toni Anderson, who is always ready to meet me at the water cooler on days both good and bad. To Susan Litman, for keeping that bar raised. And to Jennifer Jackson for believing in me.
Prologue (#ulink_66d0abbe-52aa-5ff7-9700-4456c68ef9c2)
Seven hundred fifty feet under the Alaskan earth the air was dank, the shaft black as pitch.
Spring runoff—an icy sludge of water and mud—gushed down over him as he descended a wooden ladder slick with rot and moisture, foot by tortuous foot, into the cold womb of the earth. The small lamp on his mining cap pierced the blackness with a quavering halo of yellow, shadows lunging at him whenever he moved.
It was 3:42 a.m.
By the time he reached the 800 level, his knee was locked in pain, his fingers dead. He suffered from white hand—the nerves in his hands permanently damaged from the constant vibration of the heavy pneumatic jackleg drill that shuddered daily through his body as he drove blast holes into rock.
Miners got cold, they got wet and they got old as they toiled in perpetual blackness, forcing tunnels deeper and deeper into the bowels of the earth to extract ore that would be turned into bright, gleaming gold. And he was no different—his body just as battered.
Dragging his left leg now, he made his way to the scoop tram shop. He was edgy. Even at this hour, someone could be in this part of the mine. He took a tram and drove it along the tunnel to the powder magazine. Breathing hard, he worked quickly to load two bags of explosives, a couple of powder sticks, detonator caps, B-line.
By 5:02 a.m. he was tackling the knee-grinding, lung-busting seventy-story ascent to the earth’s surface. He exited the shaft at the deserted Sodwana headframe, three miles away from the main gates of the Tolkin Mine, limbs shaking. Waiting for him in cold predawn shadows was a friend with a hard shot of whiskey and a ride back into town.
At 6:33 a.m., on that bleak Alaskan morning, a man-car loaded with twelve miners trundled and screeched along the black drift eight hundred feet below ground. The men—all from the small town of Safe Harbor—huddled facing each other, knees touching, clutching thermoses and lunch pails as they made their way to their workstations for the day.
The beam from the headlamp of the man sitting in front lit the rail ahead. He spun around suddenly, terror on his face as he tried to shout a warning.
But it was too late.
The blast was massive, rocking the ground above, registering on sensitive seismic monitoring equipment as far away as the university in Anchorage.
The first external agency to be notified of an unexplained explosion in the bowels of Tolkin Mine was the Safe Harbor Fire Department. Seconds later Safe Harbor Hospital was on high alert for possible mass casualties, and frantic calls were going out for all available doctors to be on standby. These calls were picked up on home scanners, the news rippling like brushfire through the small, close-knit community. Family members hysterical with worry converged on the mine site.
Adam Rutledge, head of mine rescue and the shop steward for the local miners’ union, scrambled into his Draegers—mine rescue gear complete with breathing apparatus. He hurriedly contacted the members of his volunteer team.
When they reached the mine, acrid black smoke was billowing out from D-shaft and the extraction vents. At this point, no one aboveground knew what had happened eight hundred feet below. Snowflakes began to crystallize in the frigid air and a group of women shivered together against a biting wind, not knowing if their men were alive, injured or dead.
Among them was Mary O’Donnell, clutching the hand of her nine-year-old daughter, Muirinn.
Muirinn watched the rescuers tumble out of a bright yellow bus in their Draegers, led by their neighbor, Adam Rutledge—her friend Jett’s father.
But a police officer flanked by burly mine security men stopped Adam and his crew at the gate. One had a gun. Angry voices carried on snatches of wind as Adam clashed with the police. A German shepherd strained against his leash, barking and baring teeth at Adam. The cop then drew his gun. Adam raised both hands, backing off. Swearing.
Muirinn grew very scared.
She knew the whole town was at war over the big mine strike, neighbors pitted against neighbors, family members against each other. That’s why all the police and security men were here. Still, she didn’t understand why they wouldn’t let Mr. Rutledge and the mine rescue team in—her dad was down there.
Desperation squeezed the nine-year-old’s heart.
Snow swirled thicker. Temperatures dropped.
Slowly, miners began to emerge from the earth, blackened with soot, choking from emergency stench gas released by management into the tunnels to warn them out of the mine. Muirinn and her mother stood alone as other families were reunited all around them. A few women started to sob. Their men hadn’t come up yet, either.
Then Safe Harbor Police Chief Bill Moran came striding through the snow toward Muirinn and her mother, flakes settling thick on the wide brim of his hat.
When she saw the look in his eyes, Muirinn knew her daddy was never coming back.
By late afternoon, Chief Moran had examined the scene and learned of the two bags of explosives missing from the powder magazine. Positive he was now dealing with a mass homicide investigation, he’d contacted the FBI field office in Anchorage, and Tolkin Mine was locked down as they waited for the postblast team. But the spring snowstorm had other ideas. It barreled in and powered down with a vengeance, unleashing blizzardforce winds on Safe Harbor, cutting off access to the remote Alaskan coastal community. The FBI team was unable to land in Safe Harbor for a full forty-eight hours. The television crews came shortly after, filling the few hotels and restaurants in the tiny mining town. As the story of mass murder in the North broke, it rippled across television screens south of the 49th.
Three months later, Muirinn stood beside a hospital bed, tears streaming down her face. Sheer grief had stolen her mother’s life.
Muirinn was taken home to be raised by her grandfather, Gus O’Donnell, her last living relative.
Someone had planted a bomb that had killed Muirinn’s father, taken her mother, and changed her life forever.
And the police never found him.
The heinous secret remained buried deep in the abandoned black tunnels of Tolkin Mine. And a mass murderer still walked among the villagers of Safe Harbor.
Chapter 1 (#ulink_dc279c8f-f6f4-5c59-8bda-96de27c32ace)
Twenty years later
The wings banked as the pilot began a steep descent into an amphitheater of shimmering glacial peaks at the head of Safe Harbor Inlet, a small and isolated community that clung to a rugged coastline hundreds of miles west of Anchorage.
When Muirinn O’Donnell fled this place eleven years ago, those granite mountains had been a barrier to the rest of the world, a rock and ice prison she’d sought desperately to escape. Now they were simply beautiful.
Pontoons slapped water, and the tiny yellow plane squatted down into a churning white froth as the engines slowed to a growl. The pilot taxied toward a bobbing float plane dock.
She was back, the prodigal daughter returned—almost seven months’ pregnant, and feeling so incredibly alone.
Muirinn clasped the tiny whalebone compass on a small chain around her neck, drawing comfort from the way it warmed against her palm. Her grandfather, Gus O’Donnell, had left her the small compass, along with everything else he owned, including the house at Mermaid’s Cove and Safe Harbor Publishing, his newspaper business.
His death had come as a terrible shock.
Muirinn had been on assignment in the remote jungles of West Papua for the magazine Wild Spaces when Gus’s body had been found down a shaft at the abandoned Tolkin Mine, a full thirteen days after he’d first been reported missing. And no one had been able to reach her until two weeks ago.
She’d missed his cremation and the memorial service, and she was having trouble wrapping her head around the circumstances of his death.
Muirinn had called the medical examiner herself. He’d told her Gus had been treated for years for a heart condition, and that he’d suffered cardiac arrest while down the mine shaft, which had apparently caused him to tumble a short way from the ladder to the ground. Muirinn could not imagine why her eccentric old grandfather would have been alone in the shaft of an abandoned mine. Especially if he had heart trouble.
And she was unable to accept that the dank maw of Tolkin had swallowed the life of someone else she loved.
Gus had raised her solo from the age of nine, after the death of her parents, and while Muirinn had never come home to visit him, she’d loved her grandfather beyond words.
Just the knowledge that Gus was in this world had made her feel part of something larger, a family. In losing Gus, she’d somehow lost her roots.
All she had now was this little compass to guide her.
Muirinn peered out the small window as the floatplane approached the dock, thinking that nothing had changed, yet everything had. Then suddenly she saw him.
Jett Rutledge.
The one person she’d sought to avoid for the past eleven years. The reason she’d stayed away from her hometown.
He stood at the ferry dock on the opposite side of the harbor, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, his skin tanned summer dark, his body lean and strong. His thick blue-black hair glistened in the late-evening sun.
Muirinn’s stomach turned to water.
She leaned forward, hand pressing up against the window as the plane swung around and bumped against the dock. And like a hungry voyeur she watched as the man she’d never stopped loving crouched down to talk to a boy—a boy with the same shock of blue-black hair. The same olive-toned complexion.
His son.
Muirinn’s eyes brimmed with emotion.
He ruffled the child’s hair, put a baseball cap on the boy’s head and cocked the peak down over his eyes. Jett stood as his kid raced toward the ferry, little red backpack bobbing against his back.
The child hesitated at the base of the gangplank, drawn by some invisible tie to his father. He spun around suddenly, and even from this distance Muirinn could see the bright slash of a smile in the boy’s sun-browned face as he waved fiercely to his dad one last time before boarding the boat.
At the same time a woman approached Jett, the ocean wind toying with strands of her long blond hair. Her stride was confident, happy. She placed her hand on Jett’s arm, gave him a kiss, then followed the child up the passenger ramp.
That vignette—framed by the small float plane window—struck Muirinn hard.
Her eyes blurred with emotion and a lump formed in her throat. As the sound of the prop died down and the plane door was swung open, Muirinn heard the ferry horn and saw the boat pulling out into the choppy inlet.
Jett walked slowly to the edge of the dock, hands thrust deep in his jeans pockets as he watched the ferry drawing away in a steady white V of foam. He gave one last salute, hand held high in the air, a solitary yet powerful figure on the dock. A lighthouse, a rock to which his boy would return.
“You ready to deplane, ma’am?”
Shocked, she turned to face the pilot. He had a hand held out to her, a look of concern in his eyes. She got that a lot at this stage of her pregnancy.
“Thank you,” she said, quickly donning her big, protective sunglasses as she took his hand. She stepped down onto the wooden dock, disoriented after her long series of flights from New York. Two cabs waited up on the road as the handful of passengers from Anchorage disembarked around her.
Muirinn climbed into the first taxi and gave directions to what was now her property on Mermaid’s Cove, a small bay tucked into the ragged coastline a few miles north of town. But on second thought she leaned forward. “I’m sorry, but could you take the long way around town? Not along the harbor road.”
Or the past the airstrip.
There was a risk of seeing Jett again if they went that way. She wasn’t ready for that—even from a distance. Not now.
Not after seeing him with his son. And his wife.
Muirinn’s lawyer in New York had told her that Jett Rutledge had led the search team that located Gus’s body in the mine. This news had rattled her—the idea of Jett still here in Safe Harbor, still saving people when she hadn’t allowed him to save her all those years ago. It was almost too painful to imagine.
Muirinn also knew from her grandfather that Jett had married in Las Vegas shortly after she’d left town eleven years ago, and that he’d had a child. The news had nearly killed her because Jett had refused to follow her to Los Angeles just a few months before. And when she’d learned that she was pregnant with Jett’s baby, she’d been too proud—too afraid—to return home. And so she’d chosen to bear the child alone.
At nineteen, with no money and few prospects, Muirinn had ended up giving their baby up for adoption, a decision that still haunted her.
She’d never gotten over it.
Muirinn had also learned from Gus that Jett had joined the ranks of Alaska’s bush pilots, a free-spirited breed unto themselves. And that’s when she’d told her grandfather to stop.
She didn’t want to hear one more word about Jett and his happy little family. It was driving her crazy with the pain of her own losses, so Muirinn had resorted to her tried-and-true coping mechanism—she just severed ties, cutting herself off from the source of her angst. And her grandfather had respected her request.
From that point on, Muirinn knew nothing more about Jett’s life. She hadn’t even wanted to know his wife’s name. And sheer stubborn pride forbade her from ever asking about Jett again, or from coming home. Pride, and her dark secret.
All Muirinn knew for certain was that she’d lost the only man she’d ever loved through the biggest mistake of her life. One she’d never stopped regretting. Because after Jett she’d had one failed relationship after another, no man ever quite measuring up to him.
Which was why she was having a baby on her own now.
She sank back into the cab seat, wondering where Jett’s son and wife were going on that ferry. It was late July. School was out. The kid might be going to a summer camp, or with his mother on a trip to Seattle. Anywhere.
It was none of her business.
Muirinn had given up any claim to Jett Rutledge a long, long time ago.
Yet a poignant sadness pressed through her, and she closed her eyes, placing her hand on her belly.
Do you still hate me so much, Jett?
What would she do if his parents still owned the neighboring property on Mermaid’s Cove?
Muirinn had grown up on that cove. She and Jett had stolen their first-ever kiss down in the old boat shed, hidden from the houses by a dense grove of trees. She wondered if the shed still stood.
They’d made love for the first time in that shed, too, on a night the moon had shimmered like silver over the water. She’d just turned eighteen, and Jett twenty-one. The boat shed had become their special place, and there was a time Muirinn had thought it would all be there for her forever.
But the summer she turned nineteen, everything changed.
As the cab neared the Mermaid’s Cove property, Muirinn asked the driver to drop her off at the ramshackle gate.
Bags in hand, she stood at the top of the overgrown driveway, staring down at her childhood home as the taxi pulled off in a cloud of soft glacial dust.
The scene in front of her seemed to shimmer up out of her memory to take literal shape in front of her—the garden and forest fighting for supremacy; brooding firs brushing eaves with heavy branches. Wild roses scrambled up the staircase banisters, and berry bushes bubbled up around the wooden deck that ran the length of the rustic log house.
On the deck terra-cotta pots overflowed with flowers, herbs, vegetables; all evidence of her grandfather’s green thumb. And beyond the deck, the lawn rolled down to a grove of trees, below which Mermaid’s Cove shimmered.
In a few short months this would all be gone and piled high with snow. Safe Harbor was known for the heaviest accumulation among Alaskan coastal towns.
Numbly, Muirinn walked down the driveway and set her bags at the base of the deck stairs, bending to crush a few rosemary leaves between her fingers as she did.
She drank in the scent of the herbs, listening to the hum of bees, the distant chink of wind chimes, the chuckle of waves against tiny stones in the bay below. It amazed her to think that her grandfather was actually gone; evidence of his life thrummed everywhere.
She looked up at the house, and suddenly felt his presence.
I’m so sorry for not coming home while you were still here. I’m sorry for leaving you alone.
A sudden breeze rippled through the branches, brushing through her hair. Muirinn swallowed, unnerved, as she picked up her bags.
She made her way up the stairs and dug the house key out of her purse.
Pushing open the heavy oak door with its little portal of stained glass, Muirinn stepped into the house, and back into time. She heard his gruff voice almost instantly.
�Tis the sea faeries that brought you here, Muirinn. The undines. They brought you up from the bay to your mother and father, to me. To care for you for all time.
Emotion burned sharply into her eyes as her gaze scanned the living room, full of books, paintings, photos of her and her parents. For years Muirinn hadn’t thought of those fantastical tales Gus had spun in her youth. She’d managed to lock those magical myths away deep in the recesses of her memory, behind logic and reason and the practicalities of work and life in a big city. But now they swept over her—there was no holding them back. This homecoming was going to be rougher than she thought.
More than anything, though, it was Gus’s artwork that grabbed her by the throat.
She slumped into a chair, staring at the paintings and sketches that graced the walls. She was in almost all of them—images of a wild imp, frozen in time, in charcoal, in soft ethereal watercolor. In some, her hair flowed out in corkscrew curls as she swam in the sea with the tail of a fish. In others, Gus had taken artistic license with her features, giving her green eyes even more of a mischievous upward slant, her ears a slight point, depicting her as one of the little woodland creatures he used to tell her lived up in the hills.
Eccentric to the core, Gus O’Donnell had been just like this place. Rough, yet spiritual. Wise, yet a dreamer. A big-game hunter, fisherman, writer, poet, artist. A lover of life and lore with a white shock of hair, a great bushy beard and the keen eyes of an eagle.
And he’d raised her just as wildly, eclectically, to be free.
Not that it had boded well for her. Because Muirinn hadn’t felt free. All she’d wanted to do was escape, discover the real world beyond her granite prison.
Sitting there in a bent-willow rocker, staring at her grandfather’s things, exhaustion finally claimed Muirinn, and she fell into a deep sleep.
She woke several hours later, stiff, confused. Muirinn checked the clock—it was almost 10:00 p.m. At this latitude, at this time of year, it barely got dark at night. However, clouds had started scudding across the inlet, lowering the dusky Arctic sky with the threat of a thunderstorm. A harsh wind was already swooshing firs against the roof.
Muirinn tried to flick on a light switch before realizing that she had yet to figure out how to reconnect the solar power. She lit an oil lamp instead and climbed the staircase to her grandfather’s attic office. The lawyer had said all the keys she’d need for the house, along with instructions on how to connect the power, would be in the middle drawer of her grandfather’s old oak desk.
She creaked open the attic door.
Shadows sprang at her from the far corners of the room. Muirinn’s pulse quickened.
Her grandfather’s carved desk hulked at the back of the room in front of heavy drapes used to block out the midnight sun during the summer months. A candle that had drowned in its own wick rested on the polished desk surface, along with Gus’s usual whiskey tumbler. A pang of emotion stung Muirinn’s chest.
It was as if the room were still holding its breath, just waiting for Gus to walk back in. And a strong and sudden sense gripped Muirinn that her grandfather had not been ready to quit living.
She shook the surreal notion, and stepped into the room. The attic air stirred softly around her, cobwebs lifting in currents caused by her movement. Muirinn halted suddenly. She could swear she felt a presence. Someone—or something—was in here.
Again Muirinn shook the sensation.
She set the oil lamp on the desk and seated herself in her grandfather’s leather chair. It groaned as she leaned forward to pull open the top drawer. But as she did, a thud sounded on the wooden floor, and something brushed against her leg. Muirinn froze.
She almost let out a sob of relief when she saw that it was only Quicksilver, her grandfather’s enormous old tomcat with silver fur, gold eyes, and the scars of life etched into his grizzled face. He jumped onto the desk, a purr growling low in his throat.
“Goodness, Quick,” she whispered, stroking him. “I didn’t see you come in.” He responded with an even louder rumble, and Muirinn smiled. Someone had clearly been feeding the old feline since Gus disappeared because Quicksilver was heavy and solid, if ancient.
The lawyer had mentioned that Gus’s old tenant, Mrs. Wilkie, still did housekeeping for him. She must’ve been taking care of the cat, too.
As Muirinn stroked the animal, she felt the knobs in his crooked tail, broken in two places when he’d caught it in the screen door so many years ago. Again, the sense of stolen time overwhelmed her. And with it came the guilt.
Guilt at not once having come home in eleven years.
The cat stepped into the open drawer and Muirinn edged him aside to remove the bunch of keys, her hand stilling as she caught sight of a fat brown envelope. On it was scrawled the word Tolkin in Gus’s bold hand. Muirinn removed the envelope, opened it.
Inside was a pile of old crime scene photos, most of which Muirinn recognized from a book Gus had written on the tragedy. A chill rippled over her skin.
Had Gus still been trying to figure out who’d planted the Tolkin bomb?
Despite the protracted FBI investigation, the mass homicide had never been solved. Yet while the case had turned old and cold, her grandfather had remained obsessed with it, convinced that his son’s killer still lived and walked among them in Safe Harbor.
Clearly, not even writing the bestseller had put his curiosity to rest, thought Muirinn.
She opened the drawer and spotted Gus’s laptop tucked at the very back. Her curiosity now piqued, she decided to take the envelope and the laptop downstairs to her old bedroom and look at them in bed. Perhaps she’d learn why her grandfather had gone down into that dark shaft of the abandoned mine, alone.
Jett Rutledge reached forward and turned up the volume of his truck radio. “I believe in miracles” blared from the speakers as he drove, arm out the window. In spite of the dark storm rolling in, he felt happier than he had in a long time.
He’d had a hard workout, a good dinner, a few beers with his dad at the airport club, and he’d taken some time off flying. He was now going to use this period when Troy was away at summer camp to focus on his big dream project. He wanted to prepare several more proposals that would secure financing for the next phase of a fishing lodge he was building in the wilderness farther north.
He turned onto the dirt road that snaked down to Mermaid’s Cove, heading for home. His parents had ceded their rolling oceanfront property to him years ago, opting to relocate closer to town themselves. His mother still worked occasionally as a nurse at Safe Harbor Hospital, and everything was generally more accessible from the new house—including his dad’s physiotherapy.
Few jobs aged a man quite as fast as mining. Especially working a mine like Tolkin.
The ground at Tolkin was solid rock, which meant fewer cave-ins, fewer deaths, but it also meant the company had racked up a disproportionately large number of other injuries related to the kidney and back-jarring stress of high-impact drilling.
A miner’s equipment was heavy. The men were constantly wet. Cold. The thunderous din and fumes of diesel equipment were rough on ears and respiratory tracts. And jarring along the drifts in massive trucks took its toll on bodies. So did negotiating the black ground on foot—the tunnel surfaces were invariably booby-trapped with water-filled potholes that wrenched knees, ankles and shredded tendons.
Which was what had happened to Adam Rutledge.
Jett’s dad had taken his fair share of a beating, and his injuries were worsening with arthritis and age.
But he was still alive, still watching his grandson grow, and now he was helping out with communications at the airstrip, a job Jett had scored for his father. All in all, Jett couldn’t ask for more.
As he neared Gus’s place, he wondered what was going to happen to the old man’s property now that he was gone. A thought flashed briefly through his mind that he might make an offer, join the Rutledge land with the O’Donnell acreage. But that idea led to thoughts of Muirinn O’Donnell and he instantly quashed the notion. She’d probably inherited the property. Putting in an offer would just bring him into contact with her. Jett figured he’d rather forgo the option of buying it if meant ever seeing, or talking, to her again.
His hands tensed on the wheel, anger flooding into his veins at the mere thought of Muirinn. She hadn’t even shown up for Gus’s funeral. That told him something.
It told him that she didn’t care.
She didn’t give a damn about the people she’d left behind in this town. She’d turned her back on it all—on him—and never once looked back.
Eleven years ago, Muirinn had been doing a summer stint at her grandfather’s newspaper where she’d discovered a passion for journalism. Around the same time a Hollywood production company had blown into town to do a movie on the Tolkin Mine murders, based on Gus’s book. The presence of the movie crew had turned Safe Harbor upside down, and it had fired a burning coal in Muirinn’s belly. She’d started going out to the set every day, reporting on the production, interviewing the actors and crew. In turn, the actor playing the part of Muirinn’s father had interviewed Muirinn as the surviving O’Donnell family member. In Jett’s opinion it had messed with her head, giving her a false sense of celebrity.
Then one of the crew members had suggested that Muirinn’s writing was really good, saying he’d put a word in for her at his sister’s Los Angeles magazine, and Muirinn had become completely obsessed by the idea.
Lured by absurd notions of fame, fortune and escape, she’d packed up her life and followed the crew to LA. Jett had literally begged her not to leave. He’d been so in love with that woman. He’d planned to marry her, never a doubt in his mind that they were meant for each other. But she’d been as stubborn as mule.
They’d argued hot and hard, and it had led to even hotter and angrier sex. Afterwards, she’d tried to convince Jett to go with her, but he couldn’t. He was born to live in the wilds of Alaska. It would’ve killed him to move to L.A. She’d taunted him, saying that if he really loved her enough he’d do it. And Jett, feeling her slipping from his grasp, had retaliated by saying if she did leave, he’d never forgive her, never speak to her again. He’d hate her for walking out on what they had.
Clearly, she’d taken him at his word, because the next day she’d boarded that plane and he’d never heard from her again.
Muirinn had always had a way of bringing out the irrational fire in Jett, something he regretted to this day. Because even through all his anger, Jett never had managed to let Muirinn go, and it had cost him his marriage. It had cost them … He slammed on the brakes suddenly, on the road just past Gus’s house.
A light was flickering faintly up in Gus’s attic window.
Someone was inside.
Vandals? A fire?
He put his truck into reverse, quickly backed up the road and wheeled into the rutted driveway with half a mind to alert the police before deciding it was likely just old Lydia Wilkie in there, probably using an oil lamp since the power had been disconnected after Gus’s death.
Still, it was past midnight; not a time the crazy old lady would likely be up and about inside Gus’s house.
He’d better check to make sure.
Muirinn’s sleep was shattered by a violent clap of thunder.
She jolted upright. Then she heard it again—not thunder—a thunderous banging on the door downstairs. Quicksilver shot off the bed and bolted down the hall.
Muirinn groped in the dark to light the lamp. Holding it high, she negotiated the stairs, careful not to trip over her nightdress. She halted in the hallway, glanced at the old clock. It was past midnight. Who on earth could be beating on Gus’s door at this hour?
The banging shuddered through the house again. Fear sliced into her.
She set the lamp down, reached for the bunch of keys she’d left on the hall table before going to bed. Fumbling for the right key, Muirinn headed for Gus’s gun cabinet. Another wave of banging resounded through the house.
Unlocking the cabinet, Muirinn removed Gus’s old shotgun. Hands shaking now, she loaded a cartridge, chambered the round and went to the door.
“Who is it?” she yelled.
Wind rattled hard at windows, swished through the conifers outside, branches clawing on the roof. Whoever was out there in the storm couldn’t hear her, and the pounding began again, so hard the door shook. She sucked in a deep breath and swung the door open.
And froze.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_efa8b49d-1dcb-5184-9605-bbce7d04da0a)
“Muirinn?”
Shock slammed into Jett’s chest.
The flame in the old lantern on the hall table quivered in the wind, making shadows dance over her copper hair. But she simply stared at him, green eyes glimmering, her face ghost-white, shotgun pointed at his heart.
Jett’s gaze flickered sharply at the sight of her pregnant belly under the white cotton nightdress. “What are you doing here?” His voice came out rough, raw.
Muirinn slowly lowered the 12-gauge, her left hand rising as if to reach out and touch him. Anticipation ripped through him hot and fast. But she pushed a fall of sleep-tangled curls back from her face instead, and he realized that she was shaking. “Jett?” she whispered.
He was speechless.
Nothing in this world could have prepared him for the sheer physical jolt of seeing Muirinn O’Donnell back in Safe Harbor. Especially barefoot and pregnant.
The pulse at her neck was racing, making the small compass on a chain at her throat catch the light. It lured his gaze down to her breasts, which were full and rounded. Lust tore through him, his blood already pounding with adrenaline. Every molecule in his body screamed to touch her, pull her against him, hold her so damn tight, erase the lost years. But at the same time the sight of her softly rounded belly triggered something cold and brittle in him, a protective shell forming around his raw emotions.
He needed to step away, fast, before he did or said something stupid. “I didn’t know you were back,” he said crisply. “I saw a light up in the attic, thought it might be vandals.”
She was still unable to answer, and his words hung like an inane echo in the chasm of lost years between them. Rain began to plop on the deck.
“Gus’s place has been empty,” he explained further, clearing his throat. “But I can see you have things under control.” Jett turned to go, but he hesitated on the stairs, snared by a fierce urge to turn around, drink in the sight of her once again. “Welcome home, Muirinn,” he said brusquely, then he ran lightly down the steps toward his truck, forcing himself not to look back.
“Jett—wait!”
He stilled, rain dampening his hair.
“I … I wasn’t in the attic,” she said.
He turned very slowly. “You weren’t up there when I knocked?”
She shook her head. “I was sleeping.”
“Someone was up there, Muirinn.”
“It wasn’t me.”
He wavered, then stalked back up the stairs, flicking on the light switch as he entered the house. Nothing happened.
“I haven’t figured out how to reconnect the solar power yet.”
“Here, give me that,” he said, taking the shotgun from her. “I’ll go check things out for you, connect the power, then I’ll be gone.”
He snagged the lantern from the table and thudded up the wooden stairs.
Muirinn pressed her trembling hand to her stomach, trying to collect herself. Then, forcing out a huge breath, she followed him—and the light—up to the attic.
He creaked open the attic door, the movement causing a draft to rush in from the attic window behind Gus’s desk. Drapes billowed out, scattering papers to the floor. Outside, the rain fell heavier, the breeze carrying the moisture in with it.
“I … I could swear that window wasn’t open earlier,” Muirinn said, moving quickly into the study and stooping to gather the documents scattered across the Persian rug. Her movements were awkward around her growing stomach and she could sense Jett watching her. She stilled, and her gaze slid up to meet him.
In the light of her lantern, the planes of his face were rough, utterly masculine. His mouth was shaped with a sculptor’s fine precision, wide and bracketed by laugh lines that had deepened over the years. New, too, were the fine creases that fanned out from his cobalt eyes—eyes still as clear and piercing as the day she’d left town. And they bored into her now with an animal-like intensity that turned her knees to jelly.
Muirinn swallowed.
She knew he had to be thinking about her pregnancy. She also knew that he was too damn proud to ask. They were alike in so many ways.
She stood up, awkwardly clutching the papers to her belly, her cheeks flushing as something darkened in his eyes. Something that made her feel dangerously warm inside.
“It must have been how Quicksilver got in,” she said quietly, trying to fill the volatile space between them. “My cat,” she explained, then laughed nervously. “Gus got him for me when I turned thirteen, remember?”
“That cat can hardly be called yours, Muirinn,” he said crisply. “You left him. Eleven years ago.”
The implication was clear. She didn’t have any rights. Not here, not anymore, not in Jett’s eyes. Not even to a cat.
She moistened her lips.
Jett turned from her suddenly and crossed the room. He held the lantern up behind Gus’s desk. “You didn’t see this, either?”
“God, no!” Muirinn said, coming to his side and seeing shards of glass glinting on the carpet. The desk drawers had been wrenched open, too, folders lying scattered beneath the leather chair in which she’d sat only hours before. The computer tower beneath the desk was toppled onto its side, wires ripped from the back. A chill rustled through her.
“Someone was up here, Jett, while I was sleeping.”
Jett yanked back the heavy drapes. “The windowpane’s been shattered. Whoever came in here must have ransacked Gus’s desk.” He frowned, surveying the scene. “The sound of my truck must have interrupted them.”
Muirinn wrapped her arms over her tummy, shivering as the rain-damp wind from the broken window whispered over her skin. “Why would someone want to go through Gus’s things?”
“Hell knows,” he said, studying the floorboards under the window. “But whoever did this was clearly looking for something. He might’ve tried to take the whole computer tower because your solar power is off, and he couldn’t access the information he wanted right here.”
“He?”
“There’s dirt transfer on the wooden floor here, left by a boot, about a size 12. I’d say it was a guy.”
Another gust of wind chased a ripple of goose bumps over her skin, tightening her nipples. Jett glanced at her breasts, then caught her eyes for a long beat. He looked away quickly, rubbing his brow as he cursed softly.
“Is it that hard, Jett?” she whispered. “Seeing me again?”
He kept his face turned away from her for a long moment.
“Yeah,” he mumbled. “It is. Come—” He touched her elbow, gently ushering her out onto the landing. “We should leave the scene as is. I’ll call the cops.”
He pulled the attic door closed behind them, the space on the narrow landing suddenly close, the halo of lantern light too intimate. Jett had that effect on space—it shrank around him. It wasn’t just his physical size; he radiated a kinetic energy that simply felt too large for contained spaces. He thrived out in the wilderness, and it was why he’d refused to follow her to Los Angeles. He’d said the city would kill his spirit, who he was.
In retrospect, Muirinn knew he was right. A crowded urban environment wouldn’t accommodate a man with a latent wildness like Jett’s. He was born to roam places like Alaska, the tundra, in his plane. It’s why people like him came north of 60 in the first place.
Los Angeles would have been a concrete prison for him. But at the time, it had represented freedom and adventure to her—a key to a vibrant new world.
Yet, he had left for a while. He’d gone to Las Vegas. Where he’d gotten married. And that really burned.
It also made him a hypocrite.
He glanced down into her eyes, sensuality swimming into his features.
“Jett—” she said quietly.
He swallowed, tension growing thicker. “Get something warm on, Muirinn,” he said abruptly. “I’m going to call this in. Then I’ll connect your power and wait with you until someone from the police department arrives.”
She blew out a shaky breath, nodded. “Thanks for doing this.”
He held her eyes a moment longer, then jogged down the stairs without a word.
Jett stood in the brick archway, quietly watching Muirinn busying herself in Gus’s rustic, open-plan kitchen. She’d pulled one of her grandfather’s voluminous sweaters over her white nightgown, and she’d caught her rampant copper curls back in a barrette. He felt relieved—the other look was driving him to total distraction … or destruction. Same difference with Muirinn O’Donnell.
Damn if he hadn’t gone red-hot at the sight of her on hands and knees in that cotton nightgown as she’d gathered up Gus’s papers, strewn all over the attic office. There was something about her pregnant body that drove him wild. And made him incredibly sad.
Hurt.
She’d always had such power over him, yet she’d never known the extent of her control. But now, in Gus’s oversized sweater, she looked small, vulnerable. Jett wasn’t so sure this look was any better for his health. It aroused protective instincts in him—things he didn’t want to feel for her. This was such a total shock, seeing her again, without warning. He needed to figure out what this might mean to his family. To his son.
To him.
“Hey,” she said with a soft smile, as she caught him watching. His blood quickened.
He stepped into the kitchen, making sure he remained on the opposite side of the rough wood table.
She poured him tea from a stubby copper kettle, which she set back on the gas stove, still steaming. He avoided eye contact as he took a seat at the table, and accepted the mug from her.
She’d made his tea just the way he liked it, black and sweet. The fact that she even remembered cut way too close to the bone. Why should it matter? Truth was, it did.
Everything about Muirinn mattered.
And right now he was struggling with his emotions, trying to avoid the elephant in the room that was her pregnancy, trying to be the gentleman and not ask, yet desperate to know who the father was, where he was. Why she was here alone.
The fact that she was expecting a baby at all sliced Jett like a knife. He forced out a heavy breath of air. Civility be damned—they were beyond that. There was no way to be polite about what had transpired between them, no way to bridge the divide with small talk. So he chose a direct approach. “You never came to visit Gus,” he said quietly. “You didn’t even come home for the funeral. So why are you here now?”
She studied him with those shrewd cat eyes for a moment. “I came to take over Safe Harbor Publishing, Jett. Gus left me the company in his will, along with this property.”
He literally felt himself blanch. “You’re going to stay?”
Pain flickered over her features. “Maybe.” She inhaled deeply, bracing her hands on the back of a chair. “The will stipulated that I could sell the business, but only after a year. That means running it myself for twelve months, or hiring someone else to do it.”
“So you’re here to hire someone?”
“No. I’m here to run it.”
“For one year?”
“Look, Jett, I’m not going to get in your way, okay? I’m not going to cramp your style.” She hesitated. “I … I saw you down at the ferry dock this morning, with your son—” She wavered again, as if not quite trusting herself to say the next words. “And your wife.”
Perspiration prickled across his lip. He’d made a mistake starting this conversation now. He set the mug down, getting up in the same movement, and he stalked into the hall. “I’ll just go wait outside for Officer Gage.”
“Jett?” she called after him.
He halted, hand on the doorknob.
“What’s his name? Your son?”
A strange emotion tore through him, raw and wild. Part of him didn’t want to give the name up to her, give any part of his boy to her. “Troy,” he said quietly, still facing the door. “Troy Rutledge.”
She was dead silent for a long moment. “Troy was my father’s name.”
“Your father was a good man, Muirinn. I was proud to name my son after him.”
“I … it just surprises me.”
He turned. “Why?”
“Half the town—the union hardliners—hated my dad for crossing that picket line, your own father included. They called my dad a scab, called me terrible names at school, humiliated my mother in the supermarket. They hated my father enough to blow him and eleven others up with a bomb.”
“It was a bad time for everyone, Muirinn.” Jett paused. “But no matter what people said, you know that I always cared for your father. If Troy O’Donnell hadn’t introduced me to model airplanes, to the idea of flying, I might have become a miner, not a pilot. He was the one who told me, when I was ten years old, that I could do something better with my life than go down that mine. He was a friend, Muirinn. I was twelve when he died, and I was also devastated by his murder. It ate my father up, too, regardless of what he might have said about your dad.”
Emotion seeped into her eyes, making her nose pink—making her so damn beautiful. “Thank you, Jett,” she whispered. “I … I needed to hear that.”
“It’s not for you,” he said quietly. “It’s for a man who knew honor, knew his home. Knew how not to deliberately hurt the people who cared for him.”
She stared at him. “Do you really still hate me that much?”
Wind rattled the panes. Rain smacked at the windows. “I hate what you did, Muirinn, to the people who loved you.”
He closed the heavy oak door behind him with a soft thud that seemed to resonate down through her bones.
Muirinn slumped into a chair at the kitchen table, and buried her face in her hands. If she’d known it was going to be quite so rough to see him again, she wouldn’t have come. If Jett only knew what she’d gone through since she’d left Safe Harbor. He didn’t have a clue just how much his ultimatum had cost her back then … how much it had cost them.
She should’ve told the lawyer to just go ahead and hire someone—anyone—to run Safe Harbor Publishing, and to put the word out that the company would be up for grabs within twelve months.
But at the same time, Muirinn felt in her heart that Gus had wanted her to come back. Why else would he have insisted she be given the small compass along with the terms of his will? She’d told Gus that she was pregnant, having a baby alone. He might have been trying to show her a way home, to remind her where her family roots lay.
Muirinn scrubbed her hands over her face quickly as she heard tires crunching up the driveway, telling herself it would be okay; she wasn’t trapped here anymore. She could go back to New York anytime before the twelve months were up if things weren’t working out. She could hire a publisher at any point she chose. She was the one in control here.
Smoothing errant tendrils of hair back from her face, Muirinn adjusted her sweater and went to meet the police.
“Could have been kids,” Officer Ted Gage said as he stared at the papers scattered under the desk, thumbs hooked into his gun belt. “Incidents of vandalism often flare up during the summer holidays.” His gaze tracked round the room. “Kids probably thought Gus’s place was still empty.”
“So you’re not sending crime scene techs or anything?” Muirinn asked from the doorway.
He shrugged. “That’s for the movies. We only dust for prints in major crimes. And nothing was stolen—”
“Not that I know of,” she interrupted.
“That footprint is pretty big for a kid, Gage,” said Jett. “I’d say about a size 12.”
“I can point you to several kids with feet that size,” he said around the gum between his teeth.
“Well, why don’t you see if you can match one of them up to this print?”
“That’s a lot of lab time and resources for a possible mischief or vandalism charge.” He glanced sideways at Muirinn, a whisper of hostility beneath his deceptive easy-breezy style. Unease fingered into Muirinn.
“Look,” he said suddenly. “I’ll send someone around later. Depending on our caseload.”
Muirinn was beyond exhausted now. She just wanted to go to bed. She thanked the cop, saw him out.
Jett hung back. “Would you like me to stay, Muirinn?”
She knew how difficult it must be for him to make the offer, and all she truly wanted to answer was yes.
“I’ll be fine, thank you. Officer Gage is right, it’s probably just vandalism with the place being empty and all. I can call 9-1-1 if the kids come back. Somehow I doubt that they will.”
Jett didn’t look so sure.
She wondered if his hesitancy was because of Officer Gage’s chilly attitude toward her. Or because it seemed pretty darn clear that someone had been after something in her grandfather’s office. For all Muirinn knew, they’d found what they’d been looking for, and had taken it. And she had no way of knowing what it was.
He reached for a pad of paper by the phone, scribbled something down, then ripped off the top sheet. “Here’s my number.” He looked directly into her eyes. “If you need help, Muirinn, I can be over right away. I live next door.
“Next door?”
“I’ve taken over my parents’ house.”
She felt the blood drain from her face.
His gaze skimmed over her tummy again, and she wanted to explain, to tell him that she was single; that she’d do anything for a second chance.
But he was married. He had a family.
And damn if they didn’t all live right next door. Muirinn felt vaguely nauseous at the idea of facing the other woman. She told herself that she was tough, she could handle it. She’d been through enough in her life to know that.
So instead of justifying herself, she became defensive. “You’re just dying to judge me, aren’t you, Jett?”
“I gave up judging you a long time ago, Muirinn. What you do is none of my business.”
And neither was his business hers. Yet here he stood, in her life again. And his words rang hollow.
“Look, I’m tired, Jett. I don’t want to argue. I need to get some sleep.”
He studied her for a long moment. “You always did get the last word in.”
“No, Jett. You got the last word eleven years ago when you told me you hated me, and that I should never, ever come back.”
His mouth flattened. “Muirinn—”
She swung the door open. “Go, please.”
And he stepped out into the storm-whipped darkness.
She slammed the door shut behind him, flipping the lock with a sharp click. Then she slumped against the wood, allowing the hot tears to come as she listened to the tires of his truck crunching down the driveway.
Jett stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows in his living room, rain writhing over the panes as he watched the yellow glow coming from the kitchen window of Gus’s house on the neighboring knoll.
He spun around, pacing the floor. What was he supposed to do?
Tell her?
After all these years?
No. He couldn’t. He’d done what he had for a reason—and Gus had helped him do it.
He cursed viciously.
Seeing her pregnant now, back here in Safe Harbor … the irony just made everything more complicated.
Jett poured himself a whiskey in spite of the hour and took a long, hard swig, felt the burn in his chest. He exhaled slowly. He had no choice but to ride out this storm that was Muirinn O’Donnell. If she stayed true to form, she’d probably be gone within twelve months.
He wondered again about the father of her baby; where he was, whether they were married. There was a chance that Muirinn’s husband would suddenly show up next door and join her. How in hell was he going to swallow that?
At least Troy was away at summer camp for a few weeks, because he was the one person who stood to lose the most in this situation. And Jett did not want his boy to get hurt.
He could not allow Muirinn to do that Troy.
There was just no way he was going to tell his son that Muirinn O’Donnell was his mother—that ten years ago she’d simply given him away in a private adoption.
He wasn’t going to tell Muirinn, either, that he’d named their son after her father out of some deep need to connect his boy to his mother’s side of the family.
In retrospect, Jett recognized that he’d probably been trying to tie himself back to Muirinn in some subconscious way, hoping she’d come back.
And now she was back.
Living right next door. Another baby on the way. Another man somewhere in her life. And before too long, she’d surely be gone again.
Right or wrong, the only way Jett could ever tell Muirinn the truth was if she somehow proved herself to him. She needed to show that she was worthy of her own son; that she’d stay, and not hurt Troy.
As she’d once hurt him.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_bafd3101-8903-5ea0-a0ec-9140a3b3e5ed)
Muirinn awakened to a warm and sunny morning, but inside her gut a tiny icicle of unease was growing. As she poured her morning cup of decaf, she glanced at Gus’s laptop and the envelope of photos that she’d put on the long dining room table.
Could that laptop and those photographs be what the burglars were searching for last night? She’d removed them from the attic and taken them down to her bedroom mere hours before the break-in. Had her grandfather really been poking into the old Tolkin mystery again? Was that why he was at the mine when he died?
Nothing made sense to her.
Muirinn blew out a heavy breath of air and looked out the window at the clear cobalt sky—blue as Jett’s eyes. Her gaze shifted slowly over to his deck, jutting out over the trees next door.
An American flag snapped in the breeze, colorful against the distant white peaks. Jett had found Gus’s body—he could tell her more. But Muirinn didn’t want to talk to him.
Not after last night.
She needed to stay away from him.
Her best option was to talk directly to the Safe Harbor police. She’d go to the station later today, right after she met with Rick Frankl, the editor of Safe Harbor Publishing. She’d already left a message at Rick’s office for him to call her to set up an appointment. But first she wanted to look inside Gus’s laptop.
Muirinn set her mug down, seated herself at Gus’s rustic wood table and powered up the computer. Immediately, a message box flashed up onto the screen asking for a password.
She tried several possibilities, including O’Donnell family names, and the name of the cat.
Nothing worked.
The only way she was going to access this laptop was with the aid of a computer tech who could circumvent the password protection. She also needed a tech to help reconnect the hard drive up in the attic office. Perhaps Rick Frankl could recommend one.
Muirinn reached instead for the brown envelope and slid the black-and-white crime scene photos out. She spread them over the table. Most of the images she recognized from the book her grandfather had written years ago on the Tolkin massacre. But there were a few other images she didn’t think she’d seen before. She picked one up—a shot of bootprints in shiny black mud, a ruler positioned alongside the impressions.
Muirinn flipped it over, read the notation on the back. Missing Photo #3. Bomber tracks.
She frowned. Quickly, she flipped over the rest of the photographs she didn’t recognize, laying them all facedown on the table. On the back of each one was a similar set of notations, all with the word Missing scrawled in her grandfather’s bold hand.
What did this mean?
Surely her grandfather had given up trying to actually solve the Tolkin murders? Unless … she stared at the images strewn all over the table. Unless there was new evidence.
No. It wasn’t possible.
Was it?
She turned the images faceup again, selected a photo of a mining headframe—a rusted A-shaped metal skeleton that loomed over a small boarded-up shack. She flipped it over, read the back: Missing photo #8. Sodwana headframe. Bomber used as entry to mine?
She’d never heard any theory about the bomber using the Sodwana headframe to gain access to the mine. As far as she could recall, the old Sodwana shaft was literally miles from the actual underground blast location near D-shaft. FBI investigators had always surmised that the bomber had been someone working inside the mine that day, someone who’d crossed the picket line with her father.
Muirinn realized that she didn’t even know which shaft Gus had been found in. Had it been Sodwana?
She shot another look at Jett’s deck, inhaling deeply. He would know … but before she could articulate another thought, the phone rang.
Muirinn jumped at the sudden shrill noise, then, clearing her throat, she lifted the receiver. “Hello?”
“Muirinn? This is Rick Frankl, returning your call. Welcome to Safe Harbor—I’d love to meet with you sometime today.”
Smoothing her hand over her hair, Muirinn glanced up at the wall clock. She was nervous about meeting Rick and taking over a small business she knew little about. “How are you fixed for time this afternoon, Rick?”
“Around noon would be perfect.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Looking forward to it—we all are. And I can’t begin to tell you how sorry we are for your loss, Muirinn. Gus was our cornerstone here. We all miss him.”
She swallowed against the lump forming in her throat. “Thank you, Rick.”
“His office is ready and waiting for you. We’ve left everything as it was, apart from some cleaning after the break-in—”
“Break-in?” Her hand tightened on the receiver. “When?”
“Two nights ago. Someone managed to disable the alarm system and come in via his office window.”
“Was anything stolen?”
“Nothing that we can ascertain. Gus’s desk drawers were ransacked and his computer was turned on, but that was it. We did file a report with the police, of course. Apparently there’s not much more they can do in a case like this. The cop who responded said it was probably just vandals.”
Muirinn shot another glance at the laptop, the photos spread out over the table. “Which cop?”
“Officer Ted Gage.”
After finalizing the details of the meeting, Muirinn slowly replaced the handset, a coolness cloaking her skin. Both Gus’s offices ransacked? This was more than coincidence.
And why hadn’t Officer Gage mentioned this to her last night?
Muirinn quickly gathered up the photos and slid them back into the envelope. To be safe, she unlocked a drawer hidden in the side of Gus’s thick, handcrafted table.
She placed both the envelope and the laptop into it, but as she was about to shut and lock the drawer, she caught sight of a small bottle of pills in the drawer.
She picked up container and read the label. Digoxin.
Gus’s heart medication.
Closing her fist around the bottle, holding it tight against her chest, Muirinn walked back to the window, eyes hot with emotion. Her grandfather had never mentioned his heart condition to her. But while that hurt, it wasn’t surprising. Gus had routinely refused to acknowledge his encroaching age or ill health, and he used to drink all sorts of herb teas to ward off the inevitable.
Comfrey had been his favorite—knitbone tea, he’d called it. “To knit them old bones.”
Her chest tightened at the memory of his words, and she swiped away an errant tear.
Gus had always said crying was a useless waste of time. If something worried you, you went out and fixed it. And that was exactly what she had to do now. She needed to get to the bottom of these break-ins. And she needed to know why Gus had been looking into the Tolkin Mine murders again.
Collecting herself, she locked the drawer, slipped the key and the pills into her purse, and glanced into the hall mirror. Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, she scooped up the keys to Gus’s Dodge truck.
She’d go into town, meet with Rick at the paper, and then head over to the police department.
Because now she really wanted some answers.
The truck wouldn’t start.
Muirinn turned the ignition again, and it just clicked. The oil light on the dash glowed red.
Damn.
Muirinn climbed out of the cab, hoisted up her skirt and got onto hands and knees to look underneath the vehicle. Sure enough, there in the gravel was a big, dark pool of glistening liquid.
Stretching to reach under the truck, she tapped her finger lightly into the puddle so she could smell what it was.
“Muirinn!”
She jumped, banging her head on the undercarriage. Cursing, she backed out from under the vehicle and sat up, heart thumping.
“Is that you, Muirinn?”
She blinked up into bright sunlight at the silhouetted form of an old woman bent double, peering down at her with a bunch of purple flowers clutched in her hand.
“Mrs. Wilkie?” she said, rubbing her head. “My God, you half startled me to death!”
“Are you all right, dear? Did you hurt yourself?” she said in a warm, gravelly voice that Muirinn remembered so well from her youth.
“I’m fine.” She got to her feet awkwardly, dusting her knees off. “I was just checking out the oil leak.” The back of her head throbbed where she’d banged it, and her baby was kicking. Muirinn placed her hand on her belly, calming her baby and herself.
“I heard you’d come back, sprite.” Mrs. Wilkie angled her head as she spoke, wrinkles fanning out from her intelligent gray eyes. Quicksilver, who’d materialized from nowhere at the sound of Mrs. Wilkie’s voice, was purring and rubbing against the old lady’s legs.
“I was just coming up to feed the cat, and to put some fresh flowers inside your house. I’ve also got some new herbs for tea. Sorry I scared you, dear.”
Muirinn noted that Mrs. Wilkie’s body had bowed even further to age, like a gnarled tree that had spent its life on a windswept shore. But she was still beautiful, her face tanned and creased in a way that spoke of kindness, her eyes still bright and quick. A thick gray braid hung over her shoulder, and she wore a long gypsy skirt, riotous with color. Muirinn wondered just how old the woman was now. To her mind, Mrs. Wilkie had seemed old forever, like a mythical crone.
She gave the hardy old dear a shaky smile, adrenaline still coursing through her body. “Thank you. It’s good to see you, Mrs. Wilkie. I heard from the lawyer that you’d been taking excellent care of Gus, and I see you’ve been feeding Quicksilver, but I—”
Muirinn was about to say she no longer needed daily housekeeping services. Guilt stopped her. This woman had been here for Gus—she’d been a companion to him. Which was more than Muirinn could say for herself.
Mrs. Wilkie had lived in a small cottage down by the bay on Gus’s property as long as Muirinn could remember. Even though it was now Muirinn’s land, there was probably an official lease that still needed to be honored. Plus, the woman likely relied on the minimal income Gus had paid her, whatever it was.
Muirinn needed to go easy, go slow. Give things time.
“You were saying, dear?” Mrs. Wilkie was watching her intently, waiting.
“It’s … nothing.”
“Well, it’s a terrible thing about Gus. I miss him. But it’s good to see you back, Muirinn, and to see that you are expecting, too,” Mrs. Wilkie said softly. “Are you going to have the baby here in Safe Harbor?”
Muirinn realized that she hadn’t really thought that far ahead. “I. yes, I am.”
“Well, if you go running into any trouble, you know where to find me. I’ve helped deliver my fair share of children, including my two nephews.”
“I know. Thank you, Mrs. Wilkie.” Muirinn was aware that Lydia Wilkie had once been a nurse who’d moved gradually into midwifery and naturopathy. She’d always had a keen interest in herbs and the natural healing practices of aboriginal peoples. When they were kids, Muirinn and Jett used to peer into her cottage window down by the water, pretending they were spying on the Good Witch because she was always boiling some herbal concoction on her blackened wood stove.
“Now, you call me Lydia,” she said.
Muirinn smiled. “I can’t. You’ve been Mrs. Wilkie to me forever.”
Mrs. Wilkie’s face crumpled into a grin. She took Muirinn’s hand firmly in her gnarled one. “It’s so good to have you home, sprite. Gus would be mighty pleased. Especially to have a small one around the house again.”
Muirinn nodded, emotion prickling into her eyes again at the sound of her old nickname. Damn these pregnancy hormones and this trip down memory lane. “I know he would,” she answered quietly.
I just wish I’d come home sooner.
Mrs. Wilkie turned, her gypsy skirt swirling around in a rainbow of color as she scuttled up the steps toward the front door. She unlocked it with her own key.
“Do you know any decent mechanics in town?” Muirinn called after her, vaguely uneasy with the idea of this woman coming and going into her house at will.
“Why, Jett next door could fix that truck for you, Muirinn. I’ll just go right on inside, put these flowers down on the table and call him.” She disappeared through the front door.
“Mrs. Wilkie! Wait—”
The old woman peeked back out the door. “What is it, love?”
“I … I’d rather call a mechanic from town.”
“What nonsense. You’ve been away too long, sprite.” She smiled. “We look after each other out here.” And with that she vanished into the house.
Muirinn sank onto the bottom stair, tears threatening to overwhelm her again. She dropped her face into her hands fighting to hold it all in.
Pregnancy was making her so darn emotional about coming home.
So had seeing Jett.
Her feelings for him were still powerful—feelings for a man she could never have again.
A man she’d never stopped loving.
Jett found her sitting on stairs, crying.
His heart torqued and his throat tightened—the old Muirinn had never cried.
He shut of his ignition and got out of his truck. As he approached her, he felt his mouth go dry. She was wearing a chiffon skirt in pale spring colors. She had dirt on her smooth legs and he could see way too much of her thigh for male comfort. Her fiery hair hung wild and loose around her slender shoulders, glinting with gold strands in the sun.
“Hey,” he said softly, sitting awkwardly beside her, trying to restrain himself from putting his arm around her and comforting her. “What’s up?”
She sniffed, then laughed dryly as she smeared tears and dirt across her face. “God, I’m a stupid wreck. It’s … it’s the hormones.” She nodded toward the truck. “Gus’s truck didn’t start. It was just a last little straw …” her voice faltered, hitched and flooded again with emotion. “I … miss him, Jett.” Tears came again. “I really miss him.”
And then he did touch her. He put his arm around her shoulders, drew her close and held her while she left her grief out. And he knew it was a mistake.
The warm curve of her breast, the firm swell of her belly against his torso, the exhilarating sensation of her thigh against his jeans … they did things to his body. Clouded his mind. With them came a raw and powerful protectiveness that surged through his chest, and Jett felt afraid—of what this could mean to all of them.
He was crossing a line. One look at her and he was falling in love all over again, when all he wanted was a reason to push her away, a reason to hate her, to despise her for what she’d done in the past.
But in this moment, the lines between past and present were blurring.
“I just wish I could have been here for Gus, then maybe … maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”
“What do you mean? His death?” Jett’s voice came out thick.
She glanced up, luminous eyes red-rimmed from crying, and his heart squeezed all over again.
“You led the search-and-rescue team that found Gus, Jett. Tell me about it. Where exactly did you find his body?”
“Muirinn—”
“Please, Jett, everything. Step by step. I need to know.”
He moistened his lips and nodded.
“When we first got the report that Gus was missing, we really had nothing to go on. Then on the thirteenth day, we got a break. A hunter called the police tip line to say he’d been on his way out into the bush almost two weeks earlier, when he’d seen Gus walking inside the perimeter fence of Tolkin Mine. He hadn’t thought anything of it until he’d returned and heard the news. We brought dogs in immediately, set them to work on the Tollkin property. They led us straight to the shaft—”
“Sodwana shaft?”
He frowned. “Yes, why?”
She hesitated. “Just wondering.”
“The grate covering the man-way inside the headframe building had been pulled off. So we went down with ropes, flashlights.” He paused, watching her, compassion filling his heart. “We found him down there. On the 300 level.”
Muirinn’s neck tensed. She swallowed. “What’s on the 300 level?”
“More tunnels. Another man-way that leads further down, possibly as far as the 800 level.”
“Who was the hunter who called in that tip, Jett?”
“The cops don’t know. It’s an anonymous tip line.”
Her cheeks flushed with frustration, or maybe anger—he’d always found that so sexy, the way her complexion betrayed her emotions so easily.
“So, basically, my grandfather might’ve been saved if he’d just taken the trouble to tell someone where he was going that day. Why didn’t he?”
“Who knows, Muirinn. You knew he was stubborn.”
“But didn’t you guys think it was odd that he was down there, down that shaft?”
“I had questions, sure,” said Jett. “But the ME and the police went through everything. So did Dr. Callaghan. Pat had been treating Gus’s heart condition for some time already. There was no evidence of foul play of any sort, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
She bit her lip to stop it from wobbling, looked away.
“Hey—” he cupped her jaw, turned her face back to his, and immediately regretted the impulse. “Gus was a really eccentric old guy, Muirinn, even more so these past few years. This was in keeping with his character.”
Tears pooled in her eyes again, and Jett couldn’t stop himself from asking. “You’d have known all this about Gus if you’d come to see him,” he said quietly. “Why, Muirinn? Why didn’t you ever come home to see your grandfather?”
She held his eyes, silent for several beats, something unreadable darkening her features. Then she sighed heavily. “I sent Gus plane tickets, Jett, so he could come to see me in New York.”
“Yeah, he wasn’t that impressed with the city. He told us about it.”
Her lips flattened. “And for his birthday, I sent him a ticket to Spain. I met him in Madrid. Gus had a thing for Hemingway—he wanted to see a bullfight.” Tears spilled down her cheeks again. “Damn, I’m so sorry,” she said brushing them away.
“Sorry for what? Caring?”
Her eyes shot up to his.
“Look, I guess I just don’t understand why you didn’t even come back for his memorial service, Muirinn. Or when you first heard he was missing.”
“I didn’t know he was missing!”
“Someone must have told you.”
“I was unreachable, Jett, on assignment in the remote jungles of West Papua—”
“With no cell phone? No satellite connection, nothing?”
“Nothing.” She rubbed her face. “That was the whole point of the assignment, to be inaccessible. For myself, an anthropologist and a photographer to spend some time with one of the world’s last truly isolated tribes. Part of my story was to be about that sense of isolation. Our goal was to feel it.”
“But you were—are—pregnant.”
“And in good health. Women in those tribes have been bearing children in that jungle for centuries. The photographer was also a paramedic. I was not at risk.”
“What if there had been an emergency?”
“That’s the point, Jett. Our society can’t conceive of living without phones, Internet, radios. We don’t know how to cope on our own anymore. We go into a total panic at the mere notion
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