House of Secrets

Demonstrating his attacker’s actions, he held his right hand at shoulder level. “He held the light here, out to the side and pointed down. If I hadn’t ducked, the shots would have hit me square in the chest. A fraction more to the right, and this one would have knocked me out, at the very least. I don’t think he expected me to survive, much less return fire. I fired to the left of the light and hit nothing. When I fired right at it, he dropped it and ran, probably realizing that the shots would bring you guys running.”

“So you think he’s a pro?”

“Or a former cop. At least he’s someone who’s pretty good at his job. And there’s a good chance he’s left-handed.”

Daniel nodded. “The knife entered the right side of David’s body, low, an upward thrust.”

Ray pressed his fingers to his skull again, and they came away only slightly sticky. “That’s a combat move. Misses the ribs and goes straight to the heart.”

“But to complete that move, wouldn’t he have twisted the knife and pulled it back out? Why didn’t he take the knife?”

Ray shook his head. “I thought about that. Not sure. But I bet we don’t find any prints.” He gestured down the tunnel. “My guess is that’s our killer.”

“So David lets him in—or maybe them—in the back door because he knows them. They kill him, but then they hear June drive up. You know that old Corvette of hers needs a new muffler.”

“And a transmission.”

Ray went on, his words picking up speed. “One takes off across the yard, while the other one heads down here, giving himself more time to get away. If a pro had to run, he may have not wanted to take a chance of getting caught with the knife.”

“So you’re convinced this wasn’t a botched robbery or home invasion.”

Ray shook his head. “Whoever it was came specifically to kill David Gallagher.”

“He just didn’t expect June to show up.”

Ray nodded. “She made him get sloppy.” He paused. “You did send someone to the other end of the tunnel?”

“The minute we heard the shots. June told us the tunnel came out at the spring house. I sent the rest of the crew there. Carter was already out in the crowd out front, so I put him on point.”

Ray scowled. “Who’s watching June? She’s still officially a suspect.”

Daniel glanced down, his lips twitching slightly. “The coroner was there, but I…uh…I handcuffed her to the kitchen cabinet in case the coroner needed to leave.”

Ray’s eyebrows arched as an image of exactly how well that idea must have gone over flashed through his mind. “I’m glad you’re the one married to her sister.”

“Well…”

“Well, what?”

“The handcuffs weren’t just to keep her away from the evidence. They were to keep her from coming down here. She heard the shots and took off for that ladder. I almost had to tackle her to keep her out of here.”

Ray stared at his young deputy. His racing thoughts stalled for the first time as conflicting emotions and images swirled through his head and heart. June, his suspect—his lovely, brown-haired, blue-eyed suspect—had stood terrified and trembling over David’s body. Yet when gunshots rang out, her instinct had been to run toward him…and into potential danger. What is going on with her?

Ray wrestled his thoughts about June aside, his mouth tightening into a thin line. “Let’s go upstairs and soothe the ruffled feathers.”

“You need a doctor for that wound.”

Ray turned and headed toward the ladder. “I’m not dying. First things first. Let’s clear the crime scene, then I’ll go over and have them stitch this up.”

They headed upstairs to find that the kitchen held only the coroner and her assistant. A pair of handcuffs dangled from one cabinet’s door handle. Ray glared at Daniel, who said weakly, “We have her car blocked in. She couldn’t have gone very far.”

“June!” Ray bellowed suddenly, almost amused at how Daniel jumped.

“What?”

The quiet question came from behind them, and they turned to see June, wiping her hands on a small towel.

Ray’s eyes narrowed. “How did you—”

“Why are you bleeding?” June stared at the side of his head. “Did you get shot?”

“I’m fine. Answer my question.”

“You’re not fine. You have a hole in the side of your skull. Being a Marine doesn’t mean you’re invincible, you know.” She reached for Ray, but he caught her wrist.

“Just answer the question.”

Relenting, June rolled her eyes as she pulled her hand away. She turned and pointed at Daniel. “You. You should never handcuff anyone next to a drawer full of tools.” She looked back at Ray. “Don’t have a fit. Your deputies wouldn’t let me go to the tunnel, and standing there handcuffed to the cabinet was distinctly undignified.”

When Ray continued to stare, unmoving, June gave in with a soft sigh. “Okay, I had to go to the ladies’ room before things got dire. And it wasn’t easy in this suit.” She plucked at the arm of the white coverall.

“You washed your hands.”

She nodded. “I only touched the floor and the phone, Ray. No evidence at all on my hands.”

“Unless you killed him.”

“Well, if I did, then your deputy is going to have to find a new career, isn’t he?” she said with a forced smile.

There was a false lightness in June’s voice that worried Ray. He wondered if being handcuffed might have pushed her into her dark past, dredging up memories she’d do anything to avoid. Ray moved closer to her. “Are you okay, June? I feel like I’m losing you a little. Is there anything you want to tell me?” He looked at her, hard.

June stilled, her deep blue eyes narrowing as she searched his face, her skin losing its color again, stark against her dark brown hair. When she spoke, her words were flat and void of emotion.

“If you’re going to arrest me, get it over with, Ray. But I didn’t kill him.” She pushed past the two men blocking the door.

She didn’t get far. Instead, Ray Taylor abruptly grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. “June, I wish I could just let you walk right out of here, but you know I can’t. Now sit back down in that chair or I’m going to have Rivers handcuff you again.”

And then June did something that surprised everyone, especially Ray.

She burst into tears.

THREE

June wiped her face on the same towel she’d dried her hands on only ten minutes before. She perched on her kitchen chair again, a headache slowly but steadily circling her skull with pain. She clutched the towel, looking for some kind of reassurance, but her mind was flooded with memories. Seeing David’s dead body brought back the horror of being fourteen and watching her father beat her mother halfway to death. She had been sprawled out at June’s feet, so still June had thought her dead. Three years later, she would be. June’s father had kicked June out of the house the day her mother died, forcing her to live on the street.

Memories of her parents gave way to visions of her brother Marc, just thirteen, his face raw with wounds and gray in death. And her sisters, bruised and terrified, huddling away from the rages of their father, a man who turned home into a horror house that had sent April into a brutal early marriage and June into the dark world of the streets. Only Lindsey, four years younger but somehow wiser, had conquered the terror. After their mother’s death, she’d sued her father for emancipation at fifteen and won. Righteously angry at the world, Lindsey had walked away from her entire family. June had kept track of her on the internet, but neither she nor April had seen their sister since.

As June watched the coroner zip the body bag closed, she shook off one last memory: JR, three years ago, collapsed on the floor beside his pulpit, dead before he’d hit the floor from a heart attack so massive the doctors doubted he’d felt anything.

June forced herself to come back to the present. She looked around the room. Deputy Gage was finishing last-minute tasks with the crime-scene kit, pulling fingerprints from the kitchen table and labeling the last of the blood samples.

Standing in the hallway door, Ray and Daniel conferred over diagrams of the crime scene as the coroner and one of the deputies loaded Pastor David’s body on the gurney and wheeled him out. Outside, dozens of faces peered intently, dodging back and forth, trying to get the best view through the door.

The parsonage, like the church itself, sat in the middle of one of White Hills’ oldest and most established residential sections. One reason the Victorian had been the house of choice to replace the crumbling cottage where she and JR had first lived in this small town was its proximity to the church. It was literally next door, surrounded by the homes of potential members.

Members who now peered inside, desperate for more information. Tears coated the faces of most of the women and some of the men as the news about David spread. They held each other, some scared and anxious, others angry. They stared at her through the open door, sitting there in her white suit.

Guilty. They thought she was guilty.

June closed her eyes, memories again flashing through her mind. Other times that people stared and pointed. As JR was carried from the sanctuary. As her mother’s body had been removed from their house.

The day she had been arrested.

June had traded the abuse of home for the violence of the streets. She’d lived in abandoned boxes or sometimes at missions, working hard-labor jobs. As a kid, she’d discovered she was good with computers, so she tried to practice her gift in libraries and friends’ apartments whenever she could crash with someone, hoping it might help her get a job and get off the street somehow. And it did—in a way. An underground hacker discovered her talents, giving her a place to sleep while recruiting her to wreak mischief on corporations and local governments. She could defeat almost any firewall, break through almost any security system. And she’d loved it. Finally good at something, finally praised for her work, June took pride in tackling what she saw as the greatest puzzle-solving game ever.

When the police arrested her for computer crimes, June’s world crashed. A year later, she was eighteen, on parole and back on the streets, broke and hopeless, ready to get back to hacking. Until the night she wandered into one of Jackie Rhea “JR” Eaton’s mobile soup kitchens.

“June?”

She blinked up at Ray as if coming out of a dark dream.

“Are you okay?”

June pointed at her temple. “Headache.”

Ray smiled wryly. “Yeah. No doubt.”

The wound on his head had begun to bleed again, and June resisted the urge to reach toward it, to tend to him. “You ever going to the doctor with that? Seriously. You look awful.” The coroner had cleaned his injury with a first-aid kit, putting on a temporary bandage, but dried blood still streaked his neck and matted his dark brown, closely cropped hair. Fresh blood discolored the bandage and tape.

“Thanks. You don’t look much better yourself.”

“No doubt,” she replied, using one of Ray’s favorite expressions. But she knew the truth as well. She’d skidded when she’d fallen and slipped twice trying to get up. Even with her washed hands and white suit, she had David’s blood in her hair, which had to be topsy-turvy by now. And half of her makeup had shifted dramatically from its original location on her face.

“We still need to test your hair.”

June’s eyes widened in confusion. “I beg your pardon?”

“The blood. David fought back. Not a lot and not for long, but he could have injured one of his attackers. There may be blood from—”

“One of his attackers?”

Ray hesitated, then nodded. “You saw the footprints on the porch. So we think there were at least two. One went out the back, one through the tunnel. And maybe one of them left his blood here, too.”

June understood where he was going. “And I might have landed in it as well.”

“Another reason I didn’t want you to wash your hands.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s done. But I don’t want to miss another chance. Can you ask April to pick up a change of clothes from your house and meet us at NorthCrest Medical?”

“Why do I need to go to NorthCrest?”

Ray shifted to stand squarely over both feet, then began counting off his reasoning. “A. Because you’re covered in blood, possibly from more than one person. I want you on their records if something…untoward shows up in the blood work.”

“You mean HIV.”

“And hepatitis C. It’s a precaution.”

“I don’t have any open—”

“B. Once the adrenaline subsides, you may find that you’re really hurt somewhere. If you fell like you described, you hit pretty hard.”

“Okay.”

“And C. I’m not letting you out of my sight again until I get you to the station for a complete statement and someone is assigned to watch your house tonight.”

June sat a bit straighter. “Watch my house? You think I’m in danger?”

Ray hesitated. “Depends on whether they believe you saw them leave.”

“But I didn’t—”

“You interrupted the search of the study. They have no idea what you saw. And you’re still my material witness. Don’t argue.”

She stood up, stepping closer and tilting her head back to look up at his face. “What about my car? It has a tricky transmission.”

“Everyone in the county knows your car has a tricky transmission. We’ll leave it here for now. I’ll send it home later with a guy who’s good with a manual.”

“You have to let it warm up at least ten minutes. Then make sure you put it in First before shifting to Reverse or it won’t go anywhere. It has that 435-horsepower, big-block engine. You don’t do it right, you’ll leave half its innards sitting in the road.”

“You should have that fixed.”

“Yeah, but then it wouldn’t be June’s emerald-green 1968 Corvette with the tricky transmission.”

“Notoriety isn’t always a good thing.”

“No such thing as bad publicity.”

“Nothing good about being stranded on the side of the road.”

“Not a bad way to meet new folks in a county like this.”

“June.” He took a step closer until they were toe to toe.

“What?”

“Get it fixed.”

“So you won’t worry about me?”

Ray’s mouth tightened to a thin line, but his eyes glistened a bit. June wasn’t sure if he was going to laugh or yell.

He yelled. But he never took his eyes off hers. “Rivers!”

Daniel came to his side and Ray stepped back from June. “Please call your wife and ask her to bring a change of clothes for June to NorthCrest. We’ll be there in thirty minutes. Radio the station and the hospital that we’re on our way.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And ask Carter to clear that crowd back from the house.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ray held out his hand. “June, I need your keys.”

“They’re in the ignition.”

Ray’s eyes narrowed. “You left the keys in a Corvette?”

“Everybody in the county knows my car, as you just said. Would you steal it?”

Ray didn’t argue with her reasoning. “Considering what one of your favorite Sunday school country boys would do if they saw anyone but you driving it? No.”

Ray took June by the arm to escort her out. She paused at the door, looking out at the faces of the crowd that had grown even larger. “This could get ugly,” she whispered.

“I’ll take care of it.”

“I don’t suppose you could tell them—”

“Not yet.”

“Maybe I could just tell them that I only found—”

“June, don’t talk.”

June nodded, then took a deep breath. It’s not like I haven’t made this walk before. She pushed open the door and stepped out on the porch.

The murmurings started immediately, and June cringed as the words hit her ears. It was as if she’d betrayed them all. Ray walked beside her, waving back those who got too close.

By the time he closed the car door, shutting out the voices, tears traced down June’s cheeks, grief building again within her, composure slipping away.

Ray yanked open the driver’s door. He fastened his seat belt, then touched her arm gently. “We’ll get through this, I promise.”

“The glass house a pastor lives in doesn’t just vanish when he dies.” She twisted toward him, grief boiling over. “You have no idea what it’s like! What this brings back. How this makes me—” Her voice broke, and she wiped away tears in furious frustration.

“It brings back JR. Your dad. And your arrest.”

June squeezed her eyes shut. “How did you—?” She stopped, pressing her lips together. Of course he knows. He’s the sheriff. She took a deep breath to staunch the tears.

Ray looked her over carefully. “Just so you know, June, no matter what we do, these people out here are going to think you’re being treated with favoritism because you’re Daniel’s sister-in-law and JR’s widow.” He paused, easing the cruiser through the cluster of cars in the yard. “And my friend.”

June faced forward, looking down at her lap again. “Friend.”

“Friend,” Ray repeated. “Your choice, if I remember. Now fasten your seat belt.” He pulled out of the parsonage driveway and headed toward Highway 49, which would take them into Springfield.

For the next ten minutes, neither of them spoke. June stared out her window as Ray focused on maneuvering Highway 49’s hills and curves, and her thoughts turned to prayers. Lord, we’re going to need You more than ever. You were there when JR died. Please, guide us now. Help us have strength, understanding…and a little common sense wouldn’t hurt, either.

She looked down at her fingers, twisting them around each other. The truth was, this also felt as if she were betraying JR as well. She and JR had worked hard to transform her from a parolee to an elegant preacher’s wife. She’d studied etiquette and taken design classes. She’d practiced walking with grace in three-inch heels until her back hurt and her shoulders cramped. She’d read the Bible until she knew almost every book by heart. They’d never hidden her past from the church, but some of the folks within had never forgiven her or forgotten that they had a felon for a preacher’s wife. Only the fact that she’d never once slipped up, maintaining her elegance and class, had kept her in their good graces.

Now that JR no longer stood as her protector, the rumor mill would run out of control.

God, You’ve forgiven me. Why can’t they? Because of my disagreements with David?

David. Despite her quarrels with him, she had cared about David Gallagher, cared that he succeeded in the church she and her husband had built. For the past three years, she’d supported him, even though she’d pulled back from her activities in the church following JR’s death. In fact, until this business about Hunter had come up between them, she’d thought they were friends. But she’d begun to feel as if he was turning the people in the church against her over Hunter Bridges. And today had probably sealed her fate with them.

Their comments had upset her, but now that she thought about it, the same people who whispered behind their hands today were the same ones who always had. That would never change, guilty or innocent, no matter how good or bad her behavior. In every church, there are folks who dislike the pastor’s wife, even if they love the pastor. That was the way of the world. But June had always refused to “court” them. She preferred being straightforward and honest, even if it came with a few bumps.

Or hurt someone.

She turned to look at Ray. Since JR’s death, June hadn’t considered dating. Ray had always been good to her, checking on her, making a few repairs around the house. But he’d never so much as suggested anything more. Until about six weeks ago, when he changed where he sat every Sunday at church.

He’d moved from the balcony to sit in her pew, five rows from the front. Even in a large church like Gospel Immanuel, everyone notices when the county sheriff starts sitting with the former preacher’s wife. By the end of that first service, the rumor mill had already ground out its first tidbits. So she’d made it clear quickly: they were just friends. Nothing more.

She’d made it clear despite any feelings she had to the contrary, feelings she wasn’t even ready to admit to herself, yet.

Ray had agreed. But he hadn’t gone back to the balcony. And the man who was considered the best Bell County sheriff in its history had taken some hits to his reputation and authority. All because he’d chosen her as his friend.

She studied him now. His eyes, shadowed by physical pain, seemed to gaze into some far distance.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Ray blinked twice, as if she’d interrupted a major train of thought. “What?”

“By saying we were just friends.”

He kept his eyes on the road as he slowly smiled. “June. All the best relationships start as friends.”

Now it was her turn to blink in confusion. “Relationsh—”

An explosive pop cut off her words, and the cruiser jerked suddenly to the left, into oncoming traffic. June’s seat belt wrenched her back against the seat, locking into place as Ray hit the brakes. He wrestled the car back to the right lane and slowed, the left front tire thudding heavily on the pavement.

He eased the car off onto the shoulder, out of all traffic, and turned on the blue lights on the roof. Letting out a long sigh, he looked at June.

“You okay?”

She nodded. “Although I didn’t really need a second adrenaline rush today.”

“No doubt.” Ray reached for the radio and reported to the dispatcher what had happened, along with their location.

June looked around, realizing that while they weren’t far from Springfield, they were still surrounded by farm country. Her window overlooked a steep embankment that led down to a stream. Beyond the stream the land rose and fell in the typical undulating nature of this part of Tennessee, and rows of soybeans fluttered in a light breeze.

As he replaced the radio, he reached for the door handle. “Stay put. I’ll check on the tire.”

At that moment, the window above Ray’s hand cracked, and the radio exploded into tiny pieces as a bullet tore into it. Ray’s shouts to get out of the car sounded muffled, until June realized they were being drowned out by her own frantic screams. Ray released her belt, pushing her toward the passenger door. June jerked on the handle and scrambled out just as the windshield in front of them spiderwebbed into a thousand shards.

June bent to squat down against the car but she fell, slamming into the door. Ray tried to hold on to her, but his grip slipped. Terror washed over her as she began to slide down the embankment.

FOUR

June’s head cracked against a rock on the edge of the ravine and she went silent as she tumbled over. Scrambling but still trying to hold on to the car door, Ray frantically snatched at her arm but missed, and she slid away into the ravine. Ray let go of the door, dropping out of the line of fire and sliding down the rock-lined slope. He stumbled on the rock bed at the bottom, twisting his right ankle and hitting the ground hard. The rocks had punctured deep gashes in his right arm, but he clambered to June’s side, calling her name and checking her pulse.

June, limp, pale and unconscious, had a deep cut on her forehead and abrasions on her right cheek and arms. Blood streamed down her face and Ray pulled his shirt open and ripped away part of his undershirt, pressing it hard against her forehead. Her pulse felt thready and uneven, and Ray yanked his cell phone from his pocket.

As he called into the station for backup and an ambulance, Ray drew in several deep gulps of air to steady his voice—and his nerves. Flipping the phone shut, he pressed the cloth against June’s face again, then turned his attention up the ravine’s bank. Using the cruiser for cover, he climbed the embankment slowly, ignoring the increased throbbing in his head and arm.

Peering around the rear tire, Ray spotted the assailant on the foliage-covered hillside that rose steeply away from the other side of the road. The yellow-white late-morning sunlight glinted off the grille of an SUV—and a rifle barrel. About ten yards below the rise of the hill, and camouflaged by thick brush, the sniper still sat, apparently waiting to make sure they had not survived.