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Chapter One (#ulink_6d5dd61b-8124-5b16-892b-457e016b32ab)
Jackson Perdue stopped his car in front of the old home place. The last time he’d been here, five years ago, had been for his mother’s funeral. He had stayed in Dunmore three days, and that had been three days too long. Both he and Maleah had booked rooms at the Hometown Inn. Their stepfather had invited them to stay at the house, but Jack knew that Nolan had been relieved when they both declined his reluctant offer. When he left town, he had felt certain he would never return.
Never say never.
Things change. Life doesn’t stay the same. Nolan Reaves was dead. The old bastard had keeled over in his workshop behind the house eight months ago. Heart attack.
Funny thing was, Jack had thought the son of a bitch didn’t have a heart.
Neither he nor Maleah had come back to Dunmore for the funeral. He didn’t know who had hated their stepfather more, he or his sister.
Maleah had come down from Knoxville six months ago, hired a realtor and put their mother’s home up for sale. With the economy heading into a recession and real estate moving at a snail’s pace, there hadn’t been any offers on the threestory Victorian that had been in his family for four generations.
Jack turned off the engine, snatched the keys from the ignition and opened the driver’s side door. When his feet hit the pavement, he stretched to get the kinks out of his back and neck and pocketed the keys. Rounding the hood, he stepped up on the sidewalk and stared at his childhood home. His thoughts went back to a time when this place had housed a happy family, when his world had been filled with love and laughter. Before his father had been killed. Before his mother had married Nolan Reaves.
Jack left the city sidewalk and moved onto the brick walkway that led to the front porch. He stopped halfway to the porch and looked up at the windows on the left side of the second story, where his old room was located. He doubted anything of his remained. When they’d been here briefly for Mama’s funeral, he had gone no farther than the downstairs parlor. For the first twelve years of his life, this old house had been home. And for the next six years, it had been hell.
Could he actually live here again? Even if he got rid of everything that reminded him of his stepfather, he couldn’t erase the memories.
He hated the cold, austere gray color Nolan had insisted the house be painted. Mama had wept quietly when the drab gray and white covered the beautiful green, cream and rose that the house had been for generations, colors true to the time period. If he actually moved into the house, the first thing he would do was hire painters to take the Victorian back to her colorful roots. He would have the house repainted—for his mother.
“God knows I’ll never move back to Dunmore, but if I did, I wouldn’t live in that house,” Maleah had told him. “As far as I’m concerned, the house is yours if you want it.”
But that was the million-dollar question: Did he want it?
Maybe. He didn’t have to decide right away. He could stay here a few weeks and see how it went. It was either that or rent a motel room by the week. Not a pleasant prospect. Besides, if his new job didn’t work out, it would be easier to move on if he hadn’t leased an apartment or a house.
He had been at loose ends when Mike Birkett phoned and offered him the job. Otherwise, he probably wouldn’t have considered coming back to Alabama. He had been honorably discharged from the army last year, after four months in the hospital recuperating from a bomb explosion that had nearly killed him. The surgeons had reconstructed the left side of his face, neck and shoulder and had done a damn good job. Only those who had known him before the reconstruction would suspect that he’d been put back together piece by piece.
“Hey, the job is yours if you want it,” Mike had told him. “The pay isn’t much, but it’s in line with the low cost of living in Dunmore.”
“Let me think about it.”
“Come home. Take the job. Let’s get reacquainted. If after a few months you hate it, you can always quit.”
In the end, Mike had convinced him to give it a try. He’d known his old buddy had pulled a few strings to get him okayed for the position. Even though he was in really good physical shape now, he’d never be 100 percent ever again. Jack wasn’t sure he’d make a good deputy just because he’d been a top-notch soldier, but God knew he needed something to do, something to keep him sane.
He stepped up on the porch, faced the front door and paused. After taking a deep breath, he removed the house key from his pocket. He unlocked and opened the door, then walked inside. A whiff of muskiness hit him the moment he entered the foyer. The house needed airing out after being closed up for so many months. First thing in the morning, he’d open every window in the place. Since it was spring and the temps were in the seventies, it was the perfect time.
As if his feet were planted in cement, he found it impossible to move beyond where he stood just over the threshold. Glancing in every direction—left, right, up and down—he clenched his teeth together tightly. He could feel Nolan’s presence, could even smell a hint of the pipe tobacco his stepfather had used. Maybe this was a huge mistake. Maybe he’d been wrong to think that he could live here. It wasn’t too late to turn around, walk away from the house and rent a room for tonight.
God damn it, no! He wouldn’t let Nolan run him off, not the way he had when Jack was eighteen. Nolan was dead. Jack was thirty-seven, a decorated war hero, and this house was his now, his and Maleah’s, as it had once been their mother’s. If it was the last thing he ever did, he intended to erase Nolan Reaves from their ancestral home, starting with the old carriage house where their stepfather had doled out his own unique brand of punishment.
Catherine Cantrell had asked her best friend, Lorie Hammonds, to drive her by her old home, just outside the city limits. She and Mark had lived there for nearly six years before his death eighteen months ago.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Lorie asked.
“I’m sure. I have to face the past sooner or later.”
“But does it have to be today?”
Cathy sighed. Yes, it had to be today. One of the many things her therapist at Haven Home had taught her was that putting off unpleasant things didn’t make them go away. The sooner she faced it, whatever “it” was, and dealt with it, the sooner it ceased to be a monster hidden in a dark closet ready to pounce on her when she least expected it.
Lorie got out of her Ford Edge, went around the hood and met Cathy as she stood at the border of the street, her gaze scanning the porch. This was where Mark had been doused with gasoline and set on fire. This was where she had waited with him, praying with every breath, until the ambulance arrived. This was where her safe, contented life had ended. Eighteen months, three weeks and five days ago.
Every nerve in her body shivered; every muscle tensed. With her eyes wide open, she could see Mark as he had been that horrible day, his flesh charred, melted, his life draining from his body. She could hear his agonized screams and then the deadly silence that had followed.
She closed her eyes and took a deep, fortifying breath.
Lorie put her arm around Cathy’s quivering shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Cathy opened her eyes and shook her head. “Not yet.”
“Don’t do this to yourself. Enough’s enough.”
“I imagine the new minister’s wife redecorated,” Cathy said. “No woman wants to live in a house decorated by a former owner.”
“The new minister is a widower with a teenage daughter. No wife.”
“All the same, this isn’t my house any longer. My things aren’t here. The home I created with Mark is gone.”
“Your furniture and other things are in storage,” Lorie reminded her. “When you buy a new place, you can—”
She turned quickly and faced her oldest and dearest friend. “Thank you for letting me stay with you until I find a place.” Lorie and she were BFF—best friends forever—their friendship going back to when they wore diapers. Their parents had been good friends, and they had lived only blocks apart when they were growing up.
“Your mother wants you to stay with her, you know.”
“What my mother wants isn’t as important to me as what I want.”
Lorie let out a loud, low whistle. “I don’t know what they did to you at Haven Home, but I like it. The old Cathy would never have said something like that and meant it.”
“The old Cathy no longer exists. I think she began dying the day Mark died.” She looked directly at Lorie. “I couldn’t say this to just anyone, because they wouldn’t understand, they’d take it the wrong way…but it took something as traumatic as Mark’s gruesome murder to finally give me the courage to become my own person.”
Mark’s death and a year of therapy.
Cathy took one final look at the porch and then ran her gaze over the neatly manicured lawn. “I’m ready to go now.”
She followed Lorie back to the SUV. She had faced one of many demons that she had left behind a year ago when she had checked herself in at Haven Home, a mental-rehabilitation center outside of Birmingham. After the first six months, she had become an outpatient but had stayed on as a part-time employee in the cafeteria. Her mother and Mark’s parents had visited her several times and had brought Seth with them. She had missed her son unbearably, but she had known living with his grandparents had been the best thing for him until she was able to provide him with a mentally stable mother.
Mark’s death had almost destroyed her, and only with Dr. Milton’s help had she been able to fully recover. She had gone into the intensive therapy blaming herself for Mark’s death and believing that his parents and Seth blamed her for not being able to save him. But Dr. Milton had worked with her until she had been able to admit to herself that the guilt she felt wasn’t because she blamed herself for not being able to save Mark. Realistically, logically, she knew that would have been impossible. She had done everything within her power. No, what Cathy felt guilty about, what she had had great difficulty admitting to Dr. Milton and to herself, was that she had never loved her husband. She had married him not loving him, and although she had tried to convince herself that she loved him, she hadn’t. She had cared deeply for him, had respected and admired him, but she had never been able to feel for Mark that deep, passionate love a woman should feel for her husband.
“Do you want to stop by J.B. and Mona’s to see Seth?” Lorie asked.
“No, not yet. I’m supposed to have dinner with them and Mother tomorrow, after church. I’ll wait until then.”
“J.B. and Mona may not give Seth up without a fight.” Lorie inserted the key into the ignition. “I took the liberty of hiring Elliott Floyd to represent you, just in case Mark’s parents aren’t willing to turn your son over to you now that you’re well.”
Gasping softly, Cathy snapped her head around and stared at her friend. “I don’t think a lawyer will be necessary. But thank you all the same. Seth is my child. I appreciate all that J.B. and Mona have done for him since Mark’s death, but you can’t possibly believe that they would try to take him away from me.”
Lorie shrugged. “You never know what people will do. If for any reason the Cantrells think you’re unfit to—”
“I’m fit,” Cathy said. “I believe that I’m better prepared to be a good mother to my son now than ever before, and I was a damn good mother in the past.”
Lorie eyed Cathy with speculative curiosity. “You are aware of the fact that you just said damn and didn’t blink an eye, aren’t you?”
Cathy smiled. “Surprised?”
“Shocked.” Lorie laughed. “Know any other forbidden words?”
“A whole slew of them. And sooner or later, you’ll probably hear me say all of them.”
“I want to meet your Dr. Milton one of these days,” Lorie said. “I want to shake his hand and thank him for releasing the real Catherine Nelson Cantrell from that holier-than-thou prison she stuck herself in trying to please her husband and her mother and her in-laws.”
“The days of my trying to please everyone else are over. I’ve come home to start a new life, not to rebuild my old one. I owe it to myself and to Seth to be strong and independent and live the rest of my life to the fullest, and that’s just what I intend to do.”
Nicole Powell dreaded going home to Griffin’s Rest. She and her friend, Maleah Perdue, had been gone a week, just the two of them alone in a Gatlinburg cabin in the Smoky Mountains. They had eaten out a few times and done a little shopping, but mostly they had kicked back at the cabin and done little or nothing. They had watched chick-flick DVDs, soaked in the hot tub, taken long walks on the nearby hiking trails and pigged out on the array of bad-for-you food they had purchased at a local grocery store.
The past year had been difficult for Maleah. Her older brother, Jack, had been critically wounded on his last assignment in the Middle East. She had spent weeks at his bedside, hoping and praying that he would survive. He had, but at a great cost. He had undergone several surgeries to his face and neck to rebuild what the explosion had ripped away.
During their stay at the cabin, Nic and Maleah had confided in each other, sharing things that they wouldn’t or couldn’t share with anyone else. In the two years that Nic had been married to Griffin Powell and had been co-owner of the Powell Private Security and Investigation Agency, she had become acquainted with all of their agents. Only a handful of their employees were women, and of those few, Nic had bonded with only two, Maleah and Barbara Jean Hughes.
“Have you decided what you’re going to do? Are you going to talk to Griff and tell him how you feel?” Maleah asked as Nic pulled her Escalade up in front of the huge iron gates at Griffin’s Rest. Two massive stone arches, with bronze griffins implanted in the stone, flanked the entrance.
Nic rolled down the window and said her name. The identification security system instantly recognized her voice and activated the Open function on the gates. This voice-ID system was new here at the Powell compound.
Once they were inside the estate and the gates closed behind them, Nic glanced at Maleah. “I can talk to him and try to explain, but he won’t understand.”
“He might. You won’t know until you—”
“I know. Believe me. He will not understand. I can’t ask him to choose between Yvette and me.” She could, but she was afraid to ask her husband to make that choice, because deep down inside she wasn’t completely certain that he would choose her.
“It’s not a matter of choosing between the two of you,” Maleah said. “Not really. It’s a matter of making him understand how you feel.”
“I feel jealous, and Griff doesn’t understand why because Yvette is his friend, because she’s like a sister to him, because he owes her his life. He’s not in love with her. He’s in love with me, but…”
“But recently you feel that he is putting her first. You’re his wife. You have every right to expect him to always put you first.”
Nic heaved a heavy sigh. “Griff has become so involved in whatever it is that Yvette is doing with that project of hers, that school or laboratory or sanctuary or whatever the hell it is, that he has all but turned over the running of the Powell Agency to me.”
“I still don’t see why you won’t take my suggestion and get involved in Yvette’s project yourself, if for no other reason than to find out what’s going on. And it would give you more time with Griff.”
“I suppose if I insisted, he’d ask Yvette to include me, but she’s been so secretive about the whole thing, and whenever she comes for dinner and I mention the project, she clams up.”
“Look, none of this is my business, except that you and I are friends and you’ve shared your concerns with me,” Maleah said. “But you’re Griff ’s wife and co-owner of the Powell Agency and of Griffin’s Rest. You have every right to know what kind of operation Yvette Meng has going on in those buildings that Griff had built for her less than a mile from your home.”
“I just don’t want to come off sounding like a jealous wife, even if that’s what I am. But if I don’t get some of this off my chest pretty soon, I’m going to explode, and that won’t be good for me or my marriage.”
“So talk to Griff. Talk to him tonight.”
Nic nodded. Maleah was right, of course. These feelings had been growing gradually, beginning with the day Griff told her that he would be constructing a housing complex for Dr. Yvette Meng at Griffin’s Rest, a place where some of her gifted “psychic” students would be safe and protected from the outside world.
But when Yvette had arrived six months ago to oversee the project, Nic’s concerns had escalated, and not without foundation. Even though she didn’t doubt Griff ’s love for her, she couldn’t shake the suspicion that neither he nor Yvette had been totally honest with her about their past relationship.
She trusted Griff as she had never trusted another person in her entire life. She loved him so much that sometimes it frightened her. That combination of love and trust was now being tested.
He did not deserve to live. He was like the others, pretending to be good when, in his heart, he was evil.
I have to punish him.
That’s what You want me to do, isn’t it, God?
Yes, yes, I hear You. I accept that it is my purpose in life to rain hellfire and brimstone down on the false prophets.
I will do Your bidding, Lord. I will seek out those who profess to do Your work and instead are in league with the devil. The liars. The blasphemers. The adulterers. The most vile of all sinners, those who transgress against Your holy word.
I didn’t understand completely, not at first, but I do now. I cannot wait for them to reveal themselves to me. I must search for them and do so with all diligence.
Give me the strength to do what I must do. Show me the way. I am, now and always, Your obedient servant.
What?
Yes, Lord, I see him. And I know him for what he truly is. The priest has harmed dozens of little boys, and he’s gotten away with his crimes over and over again. He must be stopped. He must be punished.
Chapter Two (#ulink_54de14a0-3caf-539a-bab2-81526e7eaf50)
Jack had gotten, at most, a total of two hours’ sleep. He was still occasionally having nightmares about his last Rangers’ assignment, and since his return to Dunmore, old boyhood nightmares had resurfaced and gotten all mixed up with the ones about the war. These days if he got four hours of sleep and didn’t wake in a cold sweat, he called it a good night.
He had slept in his old room, on the same antique double bed and lumpy mattress that were almost as old as he was. If he stayed, he’d have to buy a new mattress. He hadn’t ventured into any of the other upstairs rooms yesterday, but if he intended to air out the place, he would have to go into every room, including his mother’s bedroom, a room she had shared with Nolan.
Tossing back the musty blanket and sheet, he got out of bed, stretched, scratched his chest and tromped toward the bathroom down the hall. After taking a leak, he peered into the dusty mirror over the pedestal sink and barely recognized the man looking back at him. He was no longer the teenage boy who had run away from Dunmore to escape his tyrannical stepfather, nor was he the angry man who had returned five years ago for his mother’s funeral. Although the surgeons had done an excellent job, the left side of his face would never be the same. He would never be the same. He was still reasonably young—just turned thirty-seven. And despite his extensive injuries, the doctors had put Humpty Dumpty back together again so that he was strong and healthy. And although his career in the army was over, he now had a new job that offered him a chance to start over, to build a new life.
Out with the old and in with the new. Starting today.
Jack dressed hurriedly in faded jeans and a gray T-shirt, then headed up the stairs to the third story. He opened all the windows that hadn’t been painted shut and descended the stairs, back to the second floor, and went from room to room, tying back curtains and lifting windows to let in the fresh springtime air. When he reached his mother’s bedroom, he paused, steeled his nerves and opened the door. Except for the massive pieces of burl walnut furniture that had been in this room for generations, Jack didn’t recognize anything. The room was as cold and dreary as his stepfather had been, the walls an off-white, now faded, the wooden floor unpolished for only God knew how many years. Heavy, brown brocade drapes closed out all light from the row of windows, and a matching bedspread covered the antique bed, the bed in which his maternal grandmother had been born.
As he closed his eyes just for a second, memories of his childhood flashed through his mind. He and Maleah running into their parents’ bedroom and jumping into bed with them. His beautiful blond mother’s arms opening wide to embrace them. His big, rugged father smiling as he ruffled Jack’s hair and planted a kiss on Maleah’s forehead.
Jack marched across the room, reached up and yanked the drapes, rods and all, from the windows and left them lying in dusty heaps on the floor. Morning sunlight flooded the room. He managed to open two of the four windows. As he stood and looked at his handiwork, he knew then that this would be the first room he would clear out, clean and restore.
With the windows open and the house airing out, Jack went down the back stairs and into the kitchen, which hadn’t been remodeled in a good twenty years. He’d made a stop at a mini-mart on his way into Dunmore yesterday and picked up a few supplies, enough to tide him over for a few days. All the nonperishable items remained on the kitchen counter, where he’d left them last night.
After searching through the cabinets, he found the coffeemaker, washed it thoroughly and then put on a pot of coffee. Once the strong brew was ready, he poured himself a cupful and headed out the back door.
He had faced one demon—his mother’s bedroom. How many times had he walked by her closed door and heard her crying?
He might as well face another demon, the one that made repeat performances in his nightmares. Standing in the middle of the backyard, he stared at the old carriage house, now little more than a dilapidated, unpainted hulk. He was surprised a high wind hadn’t already toppled the rickety structure. His father had kept his fishing boat there, nothing fancy, just a sturdy utility boat with a 5-HP 4-cycle motor that they had taken out on a regular basis for their excursions on the nearby Tennessee River. Nolan had sold Bill Perdue’s boat less than six months after his marriage to Bill’s widow. Jack and Maleah had watched from the kitchen window as the new owner hitched the boat trailer to his truck and drove away. While holding his arm comfortingly around Maleah’s trembling shoulders as she cried, it had been all the thirteen-year-old Jack could do not to cry himself. Selling their father’s boat had been the least of Nolan Reaves’s crimes, but it had been a forerunner of things to come.
Jack inhaled deeply, taking in the sweet smell of honeysuckles covering the back fence. His stepfather had kept the wayward vine cut to the ground, calling it an insect magnet and otherwise worthless. Jack allowed his gaze to travel over the overgrown shrubbery and the ankle-deep grass. Nolan had been a stickler for keeping the yard neat. Flowers were not allowed, despite the fact that Jack’s mother had loved them. He would never forget the expression on her face when Nolan had cut down every bush in her beloved rose garden and then dug up the roots and burned them.
