Proof Of Innocence. Lisa Jackson
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and rumpled Nicholas’s dark hair as he scrambled into her lap.
“Can I go over to Tim’s? We’re going to build a tree house out in the back by the barn. His mom says it’s okay with her....”
Neva lifted her eyes and smiled at the taller boy scurrying after Nick. He was red-haired and gangly, with a gaping hole where his two front teeth should have been. “If you’re sure it’s all right with Betty.”
“Yeah, sure,” Tim said. “Mom likes it when Nick comes over. She says it keeps me out of her hair.”
“Does she?” Neva laughed and turned her eyes back to Nicholas. At six, he was the spitting image of his father. Wavy brown hair, intense blue eyes glimmering with hope—so much like Jason. “Only a little while, okay? Dinner will be ready in less than an hour.”
“Great!” Nicholas jumped off her lap and hurried out of the living room. The two boys left as quickly as they had appeared. Scurrying footsteps echoed down the short entry hall.
“Remember to shut the door,” Neva called, but she heard the front door squeak open and bang against the wall.
“I’ll get it.” Trask, glad for the slightest opportunity to escape the confining room, followed the boys, shut the door and returned. Facing Neva was more difficult than he had imagined and he wondered for the hundredth time if he were doing the right thing. Neva didn’t seem to think so.
She turned her brown eyes up to Trask’s clouded gaze when he reentered the room. “That,” she said, pointing in the direction that Nicholas had exited, “is the price you’ll pay.”
“Nick?”
“His innocence. Right now, Nicholas doesn’t remember what happened five years ago,” Neva said with a frown. “But if you go searching out Tory Wilson, all that will change. The gossip will start all over again; questions will be asked. Nick will have to come to terms with the fact that his father was murdered by a group of men whose relatives still live around Sinclair.”
“He will someday anyway.”
Neva’s eyes pleaded with Trask as she rose from the chair. “But not yet, Trask. He’s too young. Kids can be cruel.... I just want to give him a few more years of innocence. He’s only six....”
“This has nothing to do with Nick.”
“The hell it doesn’t! It has everything to do with him. His father was killed because he knew too much about that Quarter Horse swindle.” Neva wrapped her arms around her waist as if warding off a sudden chill, walked to one of the windows and stared outside. She stared at the Hamiltons’ place across the street, where Nicholas was busily creating a tree house, blissfully unaware of the brutal circumstances surrounding his father’s death. She trembled. “I don’t want to go through it all again,” Neva whispered, turning away from the window.
Trask shifted from one foot to the other as his conscience twinged. His thick brows drew together into a pensive scowl and he pushed impatient fingers through the coarse strands of his brown hair. “What if I told you that one of Jason’s murderers might have escaped justice?”
Neva had been approaching him. She stopped dead in her tracks. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe there were four people involved in the conspiracy—not just three.”
“I—I don’t understand.”
Trask tossed his head back and stared up at the exposed beams of the cedar ceiling. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt Neva. She and the boy had been through too much already, he thought. “What I’m saying is that I have reason to believe that one of the conspirators might never have been named. In fact, it’s a good guess that he got away scot-free.”
Neva turned narrowed eyes up to her husband’s brother. “Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“This isn’t some kind of a morbid joke—”
“Neva,” he reproached, and she had only to look into his serious blue eyes to realize that he would never joke about anything as painful and vile as Jason’s unnecessary death.
“You thought there were only three men involved. So what happened to change your mind?”
Knowing that he was probably making the biggest blunder of his short career in politics, Trask reached into his back pocket and withdrew the slightly wrinkled photocopy of the anonymous letter he had received in Washington just a week earlier. The letter had been his reason for returning—or so he had tried to convince himself for the past six days.
Neva took the grayish document and read the few sentences before shaking her head and letting her short blond curls fall around her face in neglected disarray. “This is a lie,” she said aloud. The letter quivered in her small hand. “All the men connected with Jason’s death were tried and convicted. Judge Linn Benton and George Henderson are in the pen serving time and Calvin Wilson is dead.”
“So who does that leave?” he demanded.
“No one.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“But now you’re not so sure?”
“Not until I talk to Victoria Wilson.” Tory. Just the thought of seeing her again did dangerous things to his mind. “She’s the only person I know who might have the answers. The swindle took place on some property her father owned on Devil’s Ridge.”
Neva’s lower lip trembled and her dark eyes accused him of crimes better left unspoken. Trask had used Victoria Wilson to convict her father; Neva doubted that Tory would be foolish enough to trust him again. “And you think that talking with Tory will clear this up?” She waved the letter in her hand as if to emphasize her words. “This is a prank, Trask. Nothing more. Leave it alone.” She fell back into the rocker still clenching the letter and tucked her feet beneath her.
Trask silently damned himself for all the old wounds he was about to reopen. He reached forward, as if to stroke Neva’s bent head, but his fingers curled into a fist of frustration. “I wish I could, Neva,” he replied as he gently removed the letter from her hand and reached for the suede jacket he’d carelessly thrown over the back of the couch several hours earlier. He hooked one finger under the collar and tossed the jacket over his shoulder. “God, I wish I could.”
“You and your damned ideals,” she muttered. “Nothing will bring Jason back. But this...vendetta you’re on...could hurt my son.”
“Even if what I find out is the truth?”
Neva closed her eyes. She raised her hand and waved him off. She knew there was no way to talk sense to him when he had his mind made up. “Do what you have to do, Trask,” she said wearily. “You will anyway. Just remember that Nicholas is the one who’ll suffer.” Her voice was low; a warning. “You and I—we’ll survive. We always do. But what about Nick? He’s in school now and this is a small town, a very small town. People talk.”
Too much, Trask thought, silently agreeing. People talk too damned much. With an angry frown, he turned toward the door.
Neva heard his retreating footsteps echoing down the hall, the door slamming shut and finally the sound of an engine sparking to life then rumbling and fading into the distance.
CHAPTER TWO
AS DUSK SETTLED over the ranch, Tory was alone. And that’s the way she wanted it.
She sat on the front porch of the two-story farmhouse that she had called home for most of her twenty-seven years. Rough cedar boards, painted a weathered gray, were highlighted by windows trimmed in a deep wine color. The porch ran the length of the house and had a sloping shake roof supported by hand-hewn posts. The house hadn’t changed much since her father was forced to leave. Tory had attempted to keep the house and grounds in good repair...to please him when he was released. Only that wouldn’t happen. Calvin