Falling Fast (Falling Fast #1) (17 page)

“The state attorney won’t go for first,” Grace told Raleigh. “Not without having a reason for malice aforethought.”

Second didn’t sound a whole lot better.

“We’ll just see about that, Ms. Parnell.” The sheriff left the room without a backward glance.

Grace mouthed what Raleigh imagined were some pretty colorful words at his back. Her anger disappeared when she turned to Raleigh. “We’ll fight this.”

The deputy led him out of the room, where Raleigh heard Pax and his father arguing in one of the closed offices, their words muffled. Except for the last few: “You warned him!” Both men stopped when they looked up to see Raleigh being led past. Damn, Pax must have been caught coming from the cottage.

Pax reached for the door handle, aiming a hard look at his father. “What you’re doing here is wrong.” He threw open the door and stalked off in the other direction, his face a mask of anger.

Hours later, Raleigh walked out of jail on bail, accompanied by Grace. He hadn’t seen Rose at all. He didn’t want her dragged in and questioned. They’d try to push her into admitting something that would corroborate their suspicions about Raleigh. And Rose knew something that could bury him.

As he and Grace walked out of the building, Raleigh asked, “There’s a lot of animosity between you and the sheriff. Which is weird, considering you successfully represented his son on the rape charges a few years ago.”

The shadow crossed her face again. “The sheriff and I go way back, unfortunately. I had a rough past, and he likes to use it against me. He coerced me into taking his son’s case, though I did believe he was innocent. Sullivan harbors no warm feelings toward me, because he figures the charges would have been dropped anyway.”

Raleigh suspected there was more to the story, but it wasn’t his business, and he doubted that she’d tell him anyway. “I need to write you a check. For your
representation,”
he added at her questioning look.

“Mia already did.”

“From the house’s account,” he muttered. “Rip it up. I’ll write you one from my account. How much is your retainer?” He would pay for his defense from his savings.

“Twenty thousand dollars.”

He couldn’t breathe for a moment. “I don’t have that much in my account.”

“Let the check stand. She wanted to do it. You can work it out with her later.”

The moment they reached the parking lot, Mia threw herself into his arms. He embraced her, needing to feel her. She was here. She believed in him. The relief of that overwhelmed him.

Grace cleared her throat. “We’ll meet later and talk strategies. Hopefully, they’ll find the weapon, and evidence that points to the killer.”

Raleigh reached out. “Thank you.”

She accepted his handshake. “Don’t thank me yet. We have a ways to go, I’m afraid.”

Mia shook her hand, too. “At least we have a champion on our side.”

They set up an appointment for midmorning and parted ways.

“You rest, I’ll drive,” Mia said as they approached her car. “You look exhausted.”

He dropped into the passenger seat and leaned back, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Sullivan’s going to pin this on me. Grace said he’s coerced witnesses into testifying to seal the deal in other cases. And he already has someone who overheard me and my dad arguing. Or who’s making it sound like an argument.”

Mia gripped his chin in her hand, forcing him to look at her. “There were times, like when the doctor told us the tumor had returned, that I wanted to give up. I was so tired, of fighting, of being afraid. Then I’d shore myself up and realize how much I loved life. Don’t give up.”

He covered her hands with his. “Mia, I don’t want you dragged into this with me. You have a job far away. Get out while you can.”

“Are you kidding me? You think I’d
leave
you now?”

He loved her outrage, but he wasn’t going to let her devotion be her downfall. “I
want
you to leave me now. I know you’ll support me, and you can do that from Minneapolis. You can’t postpone your job, and this is going to take a while. People are going to think I’m a—”

“You’re not a monster.”

“My arrest, along with the rage-stabbing details, is going to hit the newspapers tomorrow. It’ll be worse than after the crash. Mia, don’t you get it? My life is about to go to shit. If you’re standing by me, yours will, too. People are going to treat you the same way. I won’t let you put yourself through that. Write, call, email. I need your support. But stay away from me.”

“You really want that?”

“Yes.” He had to force the word out. “I do.”

She clearly fought words that wanted to burst out. “You’re trying to protect me.”

“I didn’t do a good job of that seven years ago. I’m going to this time, whether you like it or not.”

“Dammit, Raleigh, you’re still blaming yourself for something that wasn’t your fault!”

“But it was my fault! I should have left you alone. This time I’m getting it right.”

She started the car and drove to the cottage. When they stopped for gas, he recognized an older couple who brought their car to the garage. They quickly averted their attention. So it had already started. He gave Mia a pointed look as he pumped the gas.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” she muttered. “They just don’t know what to say. Like when someone dies.”

“It means everything. They’re all going to convict me before I even go to trial.”

“Not all. Not me. Not Rose.”

“Rose. Mia, I need to talk to her alone.”

“You’re shutting me out?”

“Yes.” He would not involve her. Not in this. “You should go home.”

The glitter in her eyes tore at him. “Fine, I’ll leave. If that’s what you really want.”

“I do.” He couldn’t even look at her when he said the words again. He’d dreamed of saying them someday with a whole other meaning. As in, I want you in my life forever. Now his future was bleaker than ever. Was he destined to taste heaven with Mia, only to have it wrenched away every time?

They pulled up to the cottage, where Rose’s truck sat out front. She and Cody were waiting on the front step. The boy sprang up and raced over as the car came to a stop. His greeting wasn’t any less
enthusiastic—or
desperate—than Mia’s had been, but Cody wasn’t even trying to stop his tears.

He clung to Raleigh like a child, hiccupping and sobbing so hard that his words were
unintelligible.
“…lose
you…jail…dead!”

Raleigh rubbed his back, meeting Rose’s eyes. “I’m here, buddy. I’m not going anywhere.” He knew they were empty words, though. As empty as his future, at the moment.

“Is Dad dead because of me? Because of what happened?” Cody sobbed.

“No. It has nothing to do with that.” Now he met Mia’s eyes, narrowed as she tried to decipher his meaning. “Shh,” he soothed and ordered at once.

Rose flicked her eyes to Mia like a scared rabbit. “Kids blame themselves, you know,” she said with a hollow laugh.

“Let’s go inside.” Raleigh led the way into the cottage. He didn’t know who could hear them, and he wouldn’t put it past Sullivan to plant a spy.

Mia rubbed Cody’s shoulders. “Why would you ever think you’re to blame, sweetheart? You couldn’t possibly have hurt your father.”

He wrapped his arms around her. “Maybe God did it. To punish him.”

“Cody, it wasn’t your fault,” Rose said in a firm voice that went with the firm look she gave him:
Don’t go there
. “God doesn’t punish men for being terrible fathers. But they get theirs in the end, and that end was Hank’s fault alone.”

Cody glanced at Raleigh for confirmation, which Raleigh gave him as a nod. “Your mama’s right. Dad was into trouble, always had been. It caught up to him, is all.” He wiped the boy’s cheeks. “We need to be strong while this is being sorted out, okay?” When Cody nodded, Raleigh said, “I want to talk to your mom alone for a few minutes. Can you stay here with Miss Mia? Maybe help her pack her suitcase.”

Cody swung his gaze to her. “You’re leaving?
Now?
”

Mia smoothed his hair. “No, I’m not. That would be crazy, right? To leave your brother when he needs his friends and family the most?”

“
Yeah
.”

Mia now gave
him
a pointed look. “I’m not going anywhere. We’re sticking together.” She waved Raleigh on. “Go, talk to Rose. We’ll be fine here.”

Raleigh wasn’t comfortable leaving them alone. How much would Cody tell her? The kid trusted her, as well as feeling a degree of affection for her.

“We’ll be back in a few minutes.” Raleigh led the way to the door, gesturing for Rose to precede him out to the beach. Where the wind would float their words away.

The moment their feet hit the sand, she blurted out, “One of the deputies found me today.”

“They didn’t take you in to the station?”

“No, he just asked me a bunch of questions at my job.”

“That’s good. They hauled me right in.”

“They arrested you for Hank’s murder.” She gripped his forearm as they walked.

“They don’t have any real evidence.” He outlined what they had. “I hired a good attorney. She’s already working on having the charges dropped.”

“Thank God. Because I could tell they have you in their sights. Asking me about your relationship with Hank, if you’d been fighting recently.”

“You didn’t tell them—”

“Of course not. He didn’t ask to talk to Cody, but he already knows not to say a word. Especially to a cop.”

“He nearly told Mia.”

Rose rubbed the bony bridge of her nose. “I know. He likes her. And he was scared, real scared, when he heard you’d been arrested. I don’t know what we’d do without you, Raleigh.”

He wasn’t sure what he’d do without them, either. Or Mia. But he had to prepare for the worst while pretending to hope for the best. Because hope was still the same nasty bitch he’d always known.

Mia watched Raleigh and Rose wander into the distance as she distracted Cody with making a root-beer float.

“Why does Raleigh want you to leave?” the kid asked.

Perceptive. “He wants to protect me.”

“From being arrested, too?”

“No, from what people will think.” She grunted as she dug the scoop into a tub of hard ice cream. “Some people will assume Raleigh is guilty.”

“That’s crazy. He would never kill anyone.”

“We know that, but there are people who only know him from the outside. They don’t know his heart like we do.”

She wanted to ask Cody why he thought he was to blame, why God would punish Hank. But she held back, because that violated their privacy. Because it wasn’t her business. Mostly because Raleigh didn’t want her to know.

And that hurt. It hurt that he was pushing her away when he needed her the most. Maybe for all the right reasons, at least in his mind. Dammit, they couldn’t be there for each other the last time, when she’d been in the hospital and he’d been arrested.

“Miss Mia, why are you crying?”

She blinked, realizing that a tear had slid down her cheek. No point in denying it. “I’m sad, Cody. That Raleigh thinks more of others than he does of himself. That he tries to protect everyone else and won’t accept our protection.”

“Then we’ll protect him, Miss Mia. Whether he likes it or not.”

She smiled as she wiped away her tears. “Yes, we will.”

She finally managed to scoop enough ice cream into the mugs and pour on the root beer. They sat at the table together spooning out the carbonated foam.

“Tell me about your father.”

“He could be fun, when he’d had a couple of beers, but not too many. Then he got mean. Or all sad about his life.”

“Did he ever hit you?”

“A smack every now and then. He’d get nasty, tell me I’d never amount to nothing when I didn’t mind him.”

Mia had to hold back vile sentiments. “He had a lot of room to talk. You know that’s not true, right?”

Cody nodded as he stuck a spoonful of ice cream into his mouth. “Raleigh told me he was full of shit. Oops, ‘scuse me. But that’s what he said. He gets mad when I tell him the things Dad said to me. It was good that he warned me—” He clamped his mouth shut.

“About what?”

The kid’s eyes darkened. “Nothing.”

Oh, it was something, all right. “Cody, you can tell me anything. I care about you. And I won’t tell a soul.” She crossed her heart. “And hope to die.”

“Don’t say that!”

“Sorry. You’re right, it’s an awful saying. Not any better than loving someone to death. I cross my heart and hope to live.”

Cody dipped his finger into his float and licked off the foam. Then again. Stalling. She held her breath, telling herself that it was okay if he decided not to reveal anything.

He studied the blob of brown foam that was in the shape of a Hershey’s Kiss. “He said Dad might try to touch me. In a wrong way. And that if he did I was supposed to scream for him to stop and run. To tell him or Mama, no matter what Dad threatened.”

Mia still hadn’t breathed. She had to subtly release it. “Did he? Touch you?”

The boy nodded, his mouth in a tight frown. “That last night I saw him. And I ran, like Raleigh said to.”

“Who did you go to?”

“Raleigh.”

She sensed rather than heard someone at the door. They both turned at the same time to find Raleigh and Rose in the opening.

Everyone grew silent, but she saw fear in their eyes. Raleigh closed the door and gestured for Rose to join them at the table. She watched him compose himself, think about what he wanted to say.

“Cody…”

“I’m sorry, Raleigh. I wanted to tell Mia. I knew she’d never tell anyone else.”

“I know you trust Mia. We all do, and she’s more than trustworthy. But you put her in a real tight spot.”

Cody shook his head. “How? I don’t understand.”

But Mia did. “Your father did a terrible thing to you. Or tried to. And you went to Raleigh. And the next day your father disappeared. He was probably murdered around that time. If the police find out, they’ll know Raleigh had a good reason to kill Hank.”

And he did. Because if Raleigh had warned Cody, then he knew firsthand what his father was capable of….

Raleigh’s eyes met hers, a sharp understanding between them.

Cody shook his head. “But he was already gone when Raleigh went to talk to him.”

“I know that’s true, but that’s only Raleigh’s word,” Rose said gently. “The sheriff might not believe him.”

“I wanted to kill him,” Raleigh growled. “At least cut off his balls, something I should have done long ago. But I never saw him again.”

“They’ll think I killed him!” Cody whispered, his voice thick with tears. “ ’Cause I was the last person who saw him!”

Rose put her hand on his cheek. “No, baby, they won’t think that. You’re only a boy. No way could you have stabbed a man to death.”

“Who did?” Mia asked. “I mean, who had reason to?”

“Hank made a lot of enemies,” Rose said. “Women like me that he ditched. Some he borrowed money from, made a lot of promises he never intended to keep. There are boyfriends and husbands of those women. People he wrote bad checks to. Hell, there are at least a hundred people who had reason to kill him.”

“But they want me,” Raleigh said in a low voice.

“Grace is going to get the charges dropped,” Mia said, covering his hand with hers. “They don’t have enough evidence.”

“They want to close out the case. An unsolved murder looks bad for a town that’s trying to grow. Locking me away for it makes it nice and tidy. A family matter, no danger to the public.”

He was right. Mia had watched enough news shows about men convicted on flimsy evidence. Serving decades before some champion of justice uncovered tenuous evidence and forced eyewitness testimony. Even then, the wheels of justice turned ever so slowly.

“There has to be a way to clear you,” Rose said before Mia could utter the same words. “I’m going to make a list of everyone who wanted a piece of Hank.” Rose grabbed a pen from the table, and the notepad on which Mia and Raleigh had been tracking their progress. “His women. Loan sharks. A guy he’d had trouble with during one of his stints in prison. And I’m giving it to the sheriff.”

“What about the guy who owns the lake?” Mia asked. “Would he have any reason to kill your father?”

“None that I can think of. Like a lot of people, George had no respect for the man. But besides the fact that he’s about seventy, five-foot-seven, and weighs about two hundred fifty. In other words, he’s not exactly in shape to stab a man to death.” He shook his head. “Feels awful, hoping someone I know has a reason to kill my father.”

“God, I didn’t think about it that way,” Mia said. “George has been good to you. I feel awful.”

“You were just looking for a way to save me,” Raleigh said. “Did the real-estate agent ever call?”

“Yes.” Mia didn’t want to say it, but she had to. “He canceled. Said he had a lot of listings right now.”

Raleigh only nodded in a
See, I told you
way. Dammit, she couldn’t argue.

“I’ll make some calls tomorrow,” Mia said.

“My half of this house is going to my attorney’s costs if this goes to trial.” Defeat saturated his voice. “But first we have to sell it.”

“It’ll work out.” Mia knew he didn’t believe her. Not that she could blame him. Her optimism sounded forced to her ears.

Cody started crying. “I’m sorry, Raleigh.”

“It’s not your fault. Dad’s murder had nothing to do with you, okay? Or what happened.”

Cody nodded, but he looked about as convinced as Raleigh did.

Rose scribbled furiously, name after name, with some motive or another after the dash. Finally, she slammed the pen down. “Lookit. At least twenty names. Come on, Cody. We’re going to the sheriff’s office. You can stay in the car,” she added at his terrified look. “I’m just going to run this in.”

After some hugs and more hollow reassurances, the two left. Raleigh stared at nothing for a few moments, his mouth in a tight line. Finally, he met Mia’s gaze. “I wish he hadn’t told you.”

“I’ll never say a word. Or…are you worried about what I think of you?”

“I didn’t want anyone to know.” He dropped onto the couch and rubbed his hand over his face. “Especially you.”

She sank beside him, her hand on his arm. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know.” He let his hand drop, but his gaze was still somewhere to the left of her. “But it messes with your head. When your own dad says it’s okay, but it doesn’t feel okay. And then…it does feel good, on a physical level, anyway, but you’re all conflicted because you know in your soul it’s wrong. He started when I was ten. The ‘magic age of
enlightenment,’
he called it. When I was ready to be a man, and he was the one to teach me.”

“Sick son of a bitch.” Rage and sympathy roiled through her.

“At first, I was excited that he was going to spend time with me, because he rarely focused on me. It wasn’t penetration, just…other stuff. He always emphasized how this would help me with girls, so I could pleasure them the way he did and instruct them on how to pleasure me. After a year, I couldn’t take it anymore.” He finally flicked his gaze to her. “I told him never to touch me again.”

She stroked his arm. “That was strong of you. Brave for an eleven-year-old.”

“I threatened to tell the police, but he said they’d send me to live with strangers. That foster care was a lot worse than he would ever be. I’d heard stories. Saw fictionalized scenarios in movies. So we made a deal. I wouldn’t tell the police, and he wouldn’t touch me ever again.”

She leaned closer now, her cheek against his arm, fingers tightening around him. “That’s why you moved out on your own so young.”

“Partly. He never touched me, but I knew he wanted to. Sometimes he’d try to get me to admit that it felt good. Other times he’d cry and beg my forgiveness, saying how screwed up he was. I asked him once if he ever touched other kids, and he swore he didn’t. He hadn’t meant to do what he did, but talking about sexuality brought back memories of when he was a kid. Of his father.” Raleigh shuddered. “His drinking got worse. He was drowning in his shame, but at least he was totally ignoring me. He hooked up with every woman he could. I couldn’t live there watching his self-destruction. George, he knew things weren’t good at home. That’s why he let me move into the trailer in exchange for watching the property. He saved me from sleeping outside.”

“Thank God for George,” she whispered. “You never told anyone?”

“It was a secret that made me feel dirty. When Cody was born, I worried. Just before he was about to turn ten—the ‘magic age of
enlightenment’—I
had to warn Rose.”

“Oh, baby.” She climbed onto his lap now, facing him. “That must have been hard.”

He gave her a quick nod. “Turns out she’d been abused the same way. She understood. And she promised to protect him. I knew she would.”

“You warned Cody, too.”

“I told him no one should ever touch him down there or ask him to touch their private parts. Even someone he knew really well. Like Dad, I threw out, as an example. After it happened, when he came to me, I told him Dad had done it to me, too. I knew what he was going through. I said he could talk to me about it anytime he needed to, but he did what I did—stuffed it down and pretended it wasn’t there. I guess I didn’t set a very good example.” He dragged his gaze to hers. “Now you know all my secrets.”

“You think that makes a difference? You think I want you any less?”

“I wish you would.”

She leaned forward and kissed him. Soft and sweet. “Sorry, but I think it makes me love you even more. It makes me understand how much you’ve gone through, too, and it amazes me that you turned out to be the man you are. I’m very lucky to have you in my life.”

His chin trembled as his eyes took her in. He brushed his hand over her hair. “The problem is that my life is cursed. And sooner or later it’s going to rub off on you again. It already has once. I think it’s foolish to tempt fate twice.”

“You said you needed me.”

“I did?”

“Yes, you said you needed my support.”

“Specifically, your emails. Your calls. Then I said I wanted you to leave.”

“But you don’t want me to leave.” She rubbed her knuckles over his heart. “There’s a part of you that wants me to stay and stand by you no matter what. Then there’s the part—the unselfish part that proves what a good man you are—that wants to protect me. I appreciate that, I really do. But there is no part of me that would feel right leaving you.”

“What about your job? That’s been your dream for years. They’re not going to be especially understanding about postponing your start date because your felon boyfriend is under arrest for murder.”

She found a smile despite his words. “So you consider yourself my boyfriend?”

“Mia, don’t get stuck on the details.”

“I told them a close friend was in trouble, and that I needed to help.”

“Told? As in past tense?”

She gestured toward her phone, sitting next to her purse. “A little while ago.” She wasn’t going to say that they couldn’t extend her start date. They were shorthanded, and if she couldn’t begin on their agreed-upon date they would contact another candidate. Sure, it had been hard to tell them to do that. “That dream was part of my safe, comfortable life plan. In familiar surroundings, not far from my parents. At the heart of it, I want to help others who are going through what I did, cancer or burns. My real dream is to embrace life. Love.”

“Dammit, Mia. You—”

She kissed him harder this time, just to shut him up. He surprised her by hungrily kissing her back. Desperately. “Love me, Raleigh.” She tugged at his shirt, and he tore it off. He pulled off her shirt, her bra, and kept kissing her as she wriggled out of her pants.

Their naked bodies came together, hot flesh to flesh, grinding together. Blindly, they touched and gripped and grasped, as though the force of a tornado were tearing them apart. If they didn’t hold on, didn’t connect deeply, they would be torn apart.

“Love me,” she pleaded, meaning the physical act and not the emotion this time.