The Smoky Mountain Mist. Paula Graves
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by cancer three days ago. No brothers or sisters, save for her stepbrother, Paul, and it wasn’t like they’d grown up together as real siblings the way Seth and his sister had.
“Have you seen Delilah recently?” Brand asked with his usual uncanny way of knowing the paths Seth’s mind was traveling at any given moment.
“Ran into her at Ledbetter’s Café over the weekend,” Seth answered. He left it at that. He wasn’t going to gossip about his sister.
Brand had never said, and Seth had never asked, why he didn’t just call up Delilah himself if he wanted to know how she was doing. Seth assumed things had gone sideways between them at some point. Probably why Dee had left the FBI years ago and eventually gone to work for Cooper Security. At the time, Seth had felt relieved by his sister’s choice, well aware of the risk that, sooner or later, his sister’s job and his own less savory choice of occupations might collide.
Of course, now that he’d found his way onto the straight and narrow, she was having trouble believing in the new, improved Seth Hammond.
“I got some good snaps of the funeral-goers, I think. I’ll check them out when I get a chance.” A hard thud on the passenger window made him jerk. He looked up to find Delilah’s sharp brown eyes burning holes into the glass window separating them. “Gotta go,” he said to Brand and hung up, shoving the cell phone into his pocket. He slanted a quick look at the backseat to make sure he’d concealed the surveillance glasses he’d been using to take images of the funeral. They were safely hidden in his gym bag on the floorboard.
With a silent sigh, he lowered the passenger window. “Hey, Dee.”
“What are you doin’ here?” His sister had been back in Tennessee for two weeks and already she’d shed her citified accent for the hard Appalachian twang of her childhood. “Up to somethin’?”
Her suspicious tone poked at his defensive side. “I was attending my boss’s funeral.”
“Funeral’s over, and yet here you are.” Delilah looked over the top of the car toward the Davenport family. “You thinking of conning a poor, grieving heiress out of her daddy’s money?”
“Funny.”
“I’m serious as a heart attack.” Her voice rose slightly, making him wince.
He glanced at the Davenport family, wondering if they had heard. “You’re making a scene, Dee.”
“Hammonds are good at making scenes, Seth. You know that.” Delilah reached into the open window, unlatched the car door and pulled it open, sliding into the passenger seat. “Better?”
“You ran into Mama, did you?” he asked drily, not missing the bleak expression in her dark eyes.
“The Bitterwood P.D. called me to come pick her up or they were throwing her in the drunk tank.” Delilah grimaced. “Who the hell told them I was back in town, anyway?”
“Sugar, there ain’t no lyin’ low in Bitterwood. Too damned small and too damned nosy.” Unlike his sister, he’d never really left the hills, though he’d kept clear of Bitterwood for a few years to let the dust settle. If not for Cleve Calhoun’s stroke five years ago, he might never have come back. But Cleve had needed him, and Seth had found a bittersweet sort of satisfaction in trying to live clean in the place where he’d first learned the taste of iniquity.
He sneaked a glance at George Davenport’s grave. The family had dispersed, Paul Bailey and his mother, Diane, walking arm in arm toward Paul’s car, while Ra-chel headed slowly across the cemetery toward another grave nearby. Marjorie Kenner’s, if he remembered correctly. Mark Bramlett’s last victim.
“I know vulnerable marks are your catnip,” Delilah drawled, “but can’t you let the girl have a few days of unmolested grief before you bilk her out of her millions?”
“You have such a high opinion of me,” he murmured, dragging his gaze away from Rachel’s stiffened spine.
“Well-earned, darlin’,” she answered, just as quietly.
“I don’t suppose it would do any good to tell you I don’t do that sort of thing anymore?”
“Yeah, and Mama swore she’d drunk her last, too, as I was puttin’ her ginned-up backside to bed.” Bitter resignation edged her voice.
Oh, Dee, he thought. People keep lettin’ you down, don’t they?
“Tell me you’re not up to something.”
“I’m done with that life, Dee. I’ve been done with it a few years now.”
Her wary but hopeful look made his heart hurt. “I left the truck over on the other side of the cemetery. Why don’t you drive me over there?”
He spared one more glance at Rachel Davenport, wondering how much longer she’d be able to remain upright. Someone had been working overtime the past few weeks, making sure she’d come tumbling down sooner or later.
The question was, why?
“I DIDN’T GET to talk to you at the service.”
Rachel’s nervous system jolted at the sound of a familiar voice a few feet away. She turned from Marjo-rie’s grave to look into a pair of concerned brown eyes.
Davis Rogers hadn’t changed a bit since their breakup five years ago. With his clean-cut good looks and effortless poise, he’d always come across as a confident, successful lawyer, even when he was still in law school at the University of Virginia.
She’d been sucked in by that easy self-composure, such a contrast to her own lack of confidence. It had been so easy to bask in his reflected successes.
For a while at least.
Then she’d found her own feet and realized his all-encompassing influence over her life had become less a shelter and more a shackle.
Easy lesson to forget on a day like today, she thought, battered by the familiar urge to enclose herself in his arms and let him make the rest of the world go away. She straightened her spine and resisted the temptation. “I didn’t realize you’d even heard about my father.”
“It made the papers in Raleigh. I wanted to pay my respects and see how you were holding up.” He brushed a piece of hair away from her face. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m fine.” His touch left her feeling little more than mild comfort. “I’m sad,” she added at his skeptical look. “And I’ll be sad for a while. But I’m okay.”
It wasn’t a lie. She was going to be okay. Despite her crushing sense of grief, she felt confident she wasn’t in danger of losing herself.
“Maybe what you need is to get out and get your mind off things.” Davis cupped her elbow with his large hand. “The clerk at the bed-and-breakfast where I’m staying suggested a great bar near the university in Knoxville where we can listen to college bands and relive our misspent youth. What do you say, Rach? It’ll be like Char-lottesville all over again.”
She grimaced. “I never really liked those bars, you know. I just went because you liked them.”
His expression of surprise was almost comical. “You didn’t?”
“I’m a Tennessee girl. I liked country music and bluegrass,” she said with a smile.
He looked mildly horrified, but he managed to smile. “I’m sure we can find a honky-tonk in Knoxville.”
“There’s a little place here in Bitterwood we could go. They have a house bluegrass band and really good loaded potato skins.” After the past few months of watching her father dying one painful inch at a time, maybe what she needed was to indulge herself. Get her mind off her losses, if only for a little while.
And why not go with Davis? She wasn’t still in love with him, but she’d always liked and trusted him. It was