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Chapter Three

“I think her memory loss is genuine.” Cain waved off Alexander Quinn’s offer of a drink and took a seat in front of the big mahogany desk that occupied most of the back half of Quinn’s office. Outside, rain and falling night obscured what would normally be a stunning view of the Smoky Mountains from the window where Quinn now stood, holding a tumbler with two fingers of bourbon in one hand as he gazed out at the gloom.

“Or perhaps she’s a talented liar.”

“Do you honestly think she’d have risked her own life in that accident in order to kill her husband? I was there at the scene before the paramedics arrived. I know how close she came to dying.”

Quinn took a sip of the whiskey and grimaced. “I didn’t say she tried to kill him. But she might be covering up what she remembers because she was culpable.”

“I think not remembering makes her afraid she’s at fault.” Cain had spent most of the afternoon going back over his encounters with Sara Lindsey, from his first glimpse of her at the roadside memorial to their wary conversation at Crybaby Falls.

She was grieving, but she didn’t like to show it. She was private and self-contained, but in her dark eyes he’d seen the ragged edges of her lingering pain. She missed her husband, grieved for him, but there had also been a hint of frustration in her tone when she’d spoken about his family, about Renee’s death.

He knew from his preliminary investigation that Donnie Lindsey had become increasingly intent upon finding out who killed Renee. The passage of years had only intensified his determination, it seemed.

What kind of havoc could his focus on the past have created in his marriage to Sara? She had been a cop, just like Donnie, so she’d have known the odds were against finding the killer after so long. Had she tried to temper his thirst for closure?

Had it created problems between them?

“Is it possible the accident wasn’t an accident?” Quinn asked after a few moments. “Whether or not the widow was involved?”

“If the sheriff’s department thought it was anything but an accident, they’d have investigated.” Cain hadn’t been able to make any contacts inside the sheriff’s department—a predictable outcome, given his dicey past relationship with Ridge County law enforcement. But everybody in Purgatory knew former Sheriff Will Toomey and Gary Lindsey had been friends since their own days at Purgatory High. If Toomey had even an inkling that the crash that had taken Donnie Lindsey’s life was anything but a tragic accident, he’d have continued the investigation instead of accepting the official verdict of accidental death.

“So maybe it’s time to set aside your investigation of the widow and start looking into the sister’s death instead.”

“You know my past with these people. I was a suspect in the murder for a while there, and I know there are folks around here who still aren’t convinced I’m innocent.”

Quinn shot him a narrow-eyed look. “Are you innocent?”

The question surprised him. “Why would you have ever hired me if you didn’t already know the answer to that question?”

Quinn’s expression didn’t change. “Why would you deflect my question?”

“I didn’t kill Renee Lindsey.” Cain pushed to his feet and started for the door. “And I don’t work for people who play mind games with me.”

Behind him, Quinn clapped his hands, slowly and deliberately. Heat rose into Cain’s neck, making his ears burn with a toxic combination of humiliation and fury.

He turned slowly, battling both emotions, and made himself look at Quinn. “Is that your way of telling me to pack up my things and get out?”

Quinn picked up his glass of whiskey from where he’d set it on the windowsill. He took a long sip before he spoke. “If I had fired you, there would be no question of my intentions.”

“You still want me on this case?” Cain tried to keep the desperation out of his voice, not wanting to reveal to Quinn just how badly he still wanted answers about Renee Lindsey’s death. But he could tell from Quinn’s expression that he hadn’t succeeded. His boss at The Gates was a former CIA man with a long and colorful past in some of the world’s most dangerous hot spots. Very little got past him.

“You have the capacity to be a good investigator,” Quinn said in a tone that oozed reason and calm. “But you have to scrape that boulder-size chip off your shoulder. You tell me you’re innocent, and I want to believe you, but you give off an air of guilt.”

“I may not be a murderer, but I’m no Boy Scout.”

“Your record in the Army was impressive. Your commanders spoke highly of your courage and skill.”

“I’m not in the Army anymore.”

“So you’re only trustworthy in uniform? But once you step foot in Purgatory, you’re nothing but trouble again?”

Cain frowned. “You know what I mean.”

“And you know what I mean.” Quinn finished off the whiskey and set the glass on his desk with a muted thud. “Did you know Seth Hammond spent over a decade as a con artist? Or that Sutton Calhoun used to steal food from the greengrocer over in Bitterwood when he was growing up? Hell, Sinclair Solano joined a terrorist group and spent five years on the FBI’s most wanted list.”

Quinn was speaking of men he’d hired at The Gates, Cain knew, men who were now vital members of his investigative team. Cain released a long, defeated sigh.

“What have you done to rival any of those things?” Quinn asked pointedly.

“I killed my mama and my twin brother just by bein’ born,” he answered bitterly. “Nobody in Purgatory’s going to give me the time of day. They think they see too much of my daddy in me. And, hell, maybe there’s something to that.”

“You had no agency in what happened to your mother or your brother at the time of your birth,” Quinn said bluntly, “no matter what your bastard of a father might have told you. And you have control over whether or not you behave as your father did. You’re not a child. Stop thinking like one.”

He never should have come back to Purgatory, Cain thought. He’d had a life in Atlanta, working construction. Making decent money doing honest work. Nobody there knew about his past, about his father or his own failings.

He didn’t let anyone get too close, of course, but his track record with friendships hadn’t exactly been great, anyway. He didn’t mind being alone.

He was used to it.

“Think about what I said,” Quinn said after a long, tense silence. “If you still want out of the job, I’ll see that you get back to Atlanta.”

“But don’t expect a reference?”

Quinn shrugged. “There are some things even I won’t lie about.” He turned back to the window, his posture a clear sign of dismissal.

Cain left the office and wandered down the short corridor into the large communal office shared by Quinn’s agents. Even after the official closing time, there were still a few agents at work. He spotted Sinclair Solano sitting on the edge of Ava Trent’s desk, his dark head bent low as they conversed in quiet tones. Sinclair looked up and nodded a greeting before he turned his attention back to the other agent.

There was something going on with those two, Cain thought, although they made an effort to keep it under wraps at work.

The new hire was still here, too. Nick Darcy. Guy had a British accent, despite being one-hundred-percent genuine American. At first, Cain had figured he was putting on airs or something, until he learned Darcy had grown up in London because his dad had been the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain. Darcy himself had worked for the State Department, in Diplomatic Security. Cain had no idea, however, why he’d left that job behind to work for The Gates.

Alexander Quinn had put together quite the motley crew. Cain just didn’t know where he was supposed to fit.

* * *

“CAIN DENNISON’S BACK in town.” Sara watched for her father’s reaction to her casual remark. Carl Dunkirk had been a good cop, with a good cop’s poker face, but she’d figured out his tells a long time ago.

He leaned back in the kitchen chair across the table from hers. The corner of his left eye twitched, even as he adopted a tone of nonchalant surprise. “Really?”

“But you already knew that.”

Her father’s lips quirked. “You’ve gotten too big for your britches, young lady.”

She grinned at him, the sensation strangely alien, as if her muscles weren’t accustomed to stretching that way. “So, what’s his deal?” she asked, giving her own poker face a workout. “Why’s he back in town?”

“How’d you know he was back?” Carl asked, ignoring her question. She wasn’t the only good investigator in the family.

“Ran into him,” she said vaguely.

“Where?”

She supposed it was too late to back out of this conversation now that she’d started it. She glanced toward the stove, where her mother stood stirring her famous homemade chicken chili in a stew pot. “I went to Crybaby Falls,” she said in a hushed tone. “He showed up.”

Her father’s eyebrows joined over the bridge of his nose. “You went there by yourself?”

“I’m a cop, Dad. I was armed, and as far as I could tell, he wasn’t.”

“You know your father’s just going to tell me what you two are whispering about later,” her mother said from the stove.

Sara arched an eyebrow at her father. He shrugged.

“Tomorrow’s the eighteenth anniversary of her death. I guess Dennison went there for the same reason I did.”

“You went to Crybaby Falls?” Ann Dunkirk turned from the stove and gave her a curious look.

“She ran into Dennison there,” her father said, shooting Sara a look that was part apology, part resignation.

“Really? I didn’t know he was back in town.”

“Y’all don’t exactly run in the same circles,” Sara said.

“I don’t think Dennison ever had a circle,” Carl said in a flat tone Sara recognized from her teenage years. Apparently his assessment of Cain Dennison hadn’t mellowed a bit in the intervening years. “He was too much like his daddy that way. Anybody with sense steered clear of the boy.”

“Renee didn’t.”

Her father just looked at her. She supposed his opinion of Renee’s judgment wasn’t something he planned to speak aloud. She’d heard it years ago, anyway, listening to her parents’ conversation shortly after the murder.

“I told Gary Lindsey the girl was heading for grief,” her father had murmured, not realizing Sara was sitting on the stairs around the corner, feeling queasy and unsettled by the news about Donnie’s sister. “The Dennison boy has never been anything but trouble, and he’s been sniffing around her for months. Gary should’ve done something.”

“Done what?” Ann had asked, her voice gentle the way it always was when she was trying to talk her husband through what she called “the valley of the shadow”—the gut-burning stress that came from dealing with death and depravity on a constant basis.

“Locked her up until she was thirty,” her father had growled with a burst of anger. “Had the boy arrested.”

“On what grounds?” Her mother had tried to walk the line between sympathy and rationality when dealing with her father’s bleak moods. Most of the time she succeeded.

That time, not so much.

“Stalking. Harassment. Statutory rape.”

“She was nearly eighteen, Carl. And nobody knew she was pregnant.”

“All I could think was, what if it had been Sara?” Her father had broken down then, the sound of his harsh sobs sending chills up Sara’s spine. She’d sneaked back upstairs to her bedroom and curled up under the bedcovers, shaken to the core, as much by her father’s reaction to Renee Lindsey’s death as by the murder itself.

“You still think he did it, don’t you?” she asked her father.

Over her father’s shoulder, Ann Dunkirk gave her daughter a warning look. Apparently the Renee Lindsey murder was still a volatile subject in the Dunkirk household, all these years later.

“I don’t know,” Carl answered after a pause. “He was always the most likely suspect.”

“Even though he wasn’t the baby’s father?”

“That might have been the motive.” Carl scraped his empty coffee cup in a small circle across the table in front of him. “Maybe she told him about the baby and he killed her in a jealous rage.”

“Did you know he was in the Army?”

Carl shot her a skeptical look. “He tell you that?”

She nodded. “You think it’s a lie?”

“Hard to imagine that wild buck making it through boot camp.”

“The military can sometimes straighten a person out.”

“Sometimes. If he wants to change.”

Sara put her hand on her father’s cup, stopping him from scraping it across the table again. “He struck me as different from the man I remembered.”

“Apparently he’s been trying to talk to some folks at the sheriff’s department about Donnie’s accident.”

Sara tried not to react, but she could see by the narrowing of her father’s eyes that she’d failed. Her mother stopped stirring the chili and turned to face them again.

“Why would he be looking into Donnie’s accident?” she asked.

“He was first on the scene, remember?” Sara murmured. She didn’t actually remember seeing him; she didn’t remember anything about the accident, really. But she’d heard what Cain had done to save her life.

And she’d never even told him thanks.

“You’re not entirely surprised to hear that Dennison’s been asking questions, are you?” Carl asked bluntly. “What do you know?”

She sighed and pushed the coffee cup back toward him. “Before I went to Crybaby Falls, I went to the roadside memorial Joyce maintains for Donnie on Black Creek Road.”

“She went there instead of the cemetery,” her mother told her father before turning her gentle, dark eyes toward Sara. “I called Joyce after we talked earlier. To let her know where you’d been.”

Sara felt a flutter of guilt. “I should have called her myself.”

“I tried to explain to Joyce that you deal with your grief in private ways. You always have.”

“Joyce wasn’t happy, I guess.”

“Joyce hasn’t been happy in eighteen years,” Carl said bluntly. “And she never liked that you and Donnie got married.”

It was nothing she didn’t know already, of course, but hearing her father say the words out loud stung more than she’d anticipated. “Yeah, well. Back to what happened when I went to the roadside memorial—to get there, you can either park on the shoulder, which is practically nonexistent on Black Creek Road at that point, or you can park at the scenic overlook up the mountain and walk back down to the curve. Which I did. When I got back to the scenic overlook, I noticed a truck with a humorous red bumper sticker as I was leaving. Didn’t think anything about it, until I saw Cain Dennison driving away from Crybaby Falls in that same truck.”

Her father’s forehead crinkled. “So you think he followed you to the roadside memorial, then to Crybaby Falls, too?”

“Hell of a coincidence if he didn’t.”

“Language, Sara,” her mother said automatically, then shot her an apologetic grin.

Sara smiled back, though inside, her guts were twisting a little at the news that Dennison had been asking questions about Donnie’s death.

Why would he do that? Asking about Renee’s murder, she could get, but why Donnie’s death? Was he somehow invested in the answers because he was the one who’d found them after the accident? Maybe he felt a sense of responsibility, as if he owed it to Donnie, somehow, to get the answers nobody had seemed able to provide.

“He’s working at that new private eye place that’s opened in the old mansion on Magnolia Street,” Carl said. “The Gates, I think they call it.”

“Odd name,” Ann commented.

“I think it’s probably a play on the whole ‘gates of purgatory’ thing,” Carl said.

“Someone opened a detective agency in Purgatory?” Sara asked, surprised. “How do they get enough business to keep the doors open in a little place like this?”

“Oh,” Ann said suddenly, turning to look at them. “I wonder if that’s what Joyce was talking about today at the cemetery.”

“What did she say?” Carl asked.

“Well, I was telling her how sorry I was about all she and Gary have gone through, losing both their children, and she said something like, she hadn’t been able to prevent what had happened to them, but she’d do anything, pay anything, to get the answers about their deaths.” Ann slanted a troubled look at Sara. “I didn’t want to argue with her about Donnie’s accident, but she has to know that’s what it was. An accident.”

“Mom, I don’t blame her for wanting answers. I’d like a few myself. Like why we were even in Purgatory that night to begin with.”

“You think maybe she’s hired The Gates to look into Donnie’s accident?” Sara’s father looked thoughtful.

“Well, you said the Dennison boy is working at The Gates, and you said he’s asking questions about Donnie’s accident. Maybe those things are connected.”

“Who on earth would hire Cain Dennison as an investigator?” Sara asked. “I mean, even if he was in the Army and all that, he’s still got a pretty sketchy background for private-eye work, doesn’t he?”

“From what I hear, the fellow running the place has taken on more than one hire with a checkered past. Heard of a fellow named Seth Hammond from over Bitterwood way?”

The name sounded familiar. “Meth mechanic or something like that?”

“No, that was his daddy, Delbert, who blew himself up about twenty years ago. You might have remembered the name from that. Seth, on the other hand, made quite a name for himself as a con artist before he supposedly went on the straight and narrow.”

“Hell of a chance to take, hiring a retired con man as a private eye.”

“You think that’s something, apparently he’s also just hired Sinclair Solano.”

“That hippie boy from California who became a terrorist?” her mother asked, her eyes widening.

“Actually, he spent most of the time he was on the FBI’s most wanted list working for the CIA as a double agent,” Sara corrected. The story of the radical turned spy had made every major daily newspaper in the country when the truth had come out about a month ago.

“I guess the CIA connection might explain that hire, then,” Carl said. “I hear the guy who runs The Gates is a former spook.”

Sara glanced at her watch. It was a quarter past six—any chance there was anybody still answering the phone at The Gates?

Her father’s sharp-eyed gaze met hers. “What are you thinking?”

She pulled her cell phone from her pocket. “I’m thinking that if Joyce really did hire The Gates to look into Donnie’s accident, someone there might want to talk to the only person who made it out of that wreck alive.”