Crybaby Falls. Пола Грейвс

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      Standing at the other end of the bridge was Sara Lindsey, her shoulder-length hair dancing around her face in the damp wind. Her body was rigid, her hands clasped so tightly around the rails of the bridge that her knuckles had turned white.

      Cain’s heart gave a lurch and settled into a rapid, pounding cadence against his rib cage. Low in his belly, he felt the slow, sweet burn of attraction and wished she was anyone else in the world.

      That he was anyone else in the world.

      “Did you kill her?” Sara asked, her low voice whipped toward him by the wind.

      He stared back at her, wondering if he’d imagined the question. Wondering if he was imagining her, standing here at the scene of the crime like an avenging angel.

      “No,” he answered.

      But he couldn’t tell if she believed him.

      * * *

      DESPITE THE PASSAGE of seventeen years since Sara had last seen him, Cain Dennison had changed little. The tall, lean boy with wary gray eyes and a feral sort of masculine beauty had aged into a taller, lean-muscled man in his mid-thirties with the same winter-sky eyes and a touch of the wild. Life had etched a few more lines in his face, but those lines only made him seem more mysterious and compelling than she remembered.

      Once a bad boy...

      He had always been an object of girlhood fantasies, as sweet a piece of forbidden fruit as Purgatory had to offer. Sara herself had not been immune, even as madly in love with Donnie Lindsey as she’d been.

      The flicker of heat building low in her belly suggested she still wasn’t immune, all these years later.

      “Why are you here?” she asked. He’d left town not long after Renee’s murder, coming back now and then only to visit his grandmother, who lived near Miller’s Knob on the eastern edge of town. According to her father, who’d kept an eye on Cain Dennison’s comings and goings ever since Renee’s murder, he hadn’t been back in town since the accident three years ago.

      “Why are you?” he countered, a snap in his voice, as if he couldn’t quite control the defensive response.

      She wasn’t sure how to answer that question. Her official reason for returning to Purgatory had been to attend Joyce’s memorial day for Donnie, but she’d known before she ever climbed behind the wheel of her Chevy Silverado that she wasn’t going to make it to the cemetery.

      So why had she come?

      I want answers. The thought formed like a lightning bolt slashing through her brain.

      But answers to what questions? She couldn’t even remember coming to Purgatory the day of the accident. She knew Donnie’s motivation—the new lead she couldn’t remember. And was it a coincidence the accident had happened the day before the fifteenth anniversary of Renee’s death?

      But why had she come with him this time? Her boss at the police department hadn’t been much help in answering that question; he’d told her she’d given him no reason for asking for a few days off. The demands of her job meant that most of her closest friends had been fellow cops and their families, but apparently she’d failed to inform any of them what she and Donnie had planned to do in Purgatory, either.

      And neither her parents nor Donnie’s had known they were in town, though Joyce and Gary had told her later, in the hospital, that Donnie had called the night before to tell them he’d be in town for the anniversary of Renee’s death.

      “I don’t know,” she finally said aloud. “I guess because it was three years ago today. And tomorrow, it’ll have been eighteen years since Renee’s death.”

      Cain looked down at the falls thundering beneath the bridge under their feet, his expression grim.

      “Sometimes, I can barely remember what she looked like,” Sara continued when he didn’t speak. “Isn’t that strange? She was Donnie’s sister, and I saw her all the time, but when I try to remember things about her, it’s all fuzzy and distant, like I’m looking at the past through a frosty windshield. I wish I could blame the head injury from the crash, but the truth is, I don’t think I really knew her at all. She was just Donnie’s sister, the one who didn’t want us to bother her or mess with her things.”

      “I remember her.” The words seemed to spill over his tongue before he could stop them. His gray eyes slanted her way, narrowing as if he’d said something he regretted.

      “Do you know who fathered the baby she was carrying?” she asked.

      His gaze snapped up to hers again. “No.”

      She knew it hadn’t been Cain’s baby. DNA tests had established that much. But short of court-ordering every male who’d ever had contact with Renee to take a DNA test, the question of her baby’s paternity had remained as open a question as the identity of her killer.

      “She wouldn’t say,” he added so softly that for a moment, she wasn’t sure she’d actually heard him speak. But when he turned to look at her again, he added, “She made it clear she didn’t want anyone else to know.”

      She stepped closer, lifting her face toward him. The rain had almost stopped, but the wind had picked up, blowing damp strands of her dark hair across her face. One strand snagged on her lips, and Cain’s gaze dropped to her mouth. For a moment, his eyes darkened, and something crackled between them like electricity.

      Then he looked away again, his gaze drawn back to the waterfall.

      “Did you love her?” She hadn’t realized she was going to ask the question until it tumbled from her lips.

      He turned his head slowly, his eyes narrowing as they met her gaze. “I wanted her. I don’t reckon that’s the same thing, though.” His shoulders slumped after a moment and he turned to put his hands on the bridge railing. “I wanted her to be happy. And she wasn’t.”

      No, she wasn’t, Sara thought. She might not have a strong memory of Donnie’s sister, but what she did recall was that Renee had been full of life and laughter, even when she was being the imperious older sister—except for those last few weeks of her life.

      Sara supposed learning she was pregnant must have been terrifying for a girl like Renee, whose parents had put her on a pedestal and made big plans for her life. College, marriage, a career if she wanted it—the Lindseys had been determined to give their children a charmed life, especially their smart, beautiful firstborn.

      Renee would have felt the heavy weight of those expectations and dreaded having to tell her parents the truth.

      “She wasn’t dating anyone as far as her parents and Donnie knew.” Sara wondered if Cain Dennison was willing to be any more forthcoming now, all these years later, than he’d been right after Renee’s death. Sara couldn’t bring Donnie back, but maybe she could finish what he’d started before his death. Maybe she could find out the truth about what had happened to Renee.

      She’d been a good detective once, before the accident. And she had a lot of time on her hands now, while she tried to figure out what to do with the rest of her life.

      “I knew she was seeing СКАЧАТЬ