Trusting a Stranger (8 page)

But it wasn’t falling down at all.

In fact, it looked like someone had made an effort to keep it looking rough while in fact reinforcing it. Near the top of a particularly high snowdrift, several strips of fresh wood had been nailed over top of one area, presumably to fix a hole. Even though the porch was covered in leaves and debris, it was actually quite new, with no sign of rot. The window from which Keira had watched Calloway argue with the armed man had a new frame, too. The front door was marked with pitting and the hinges looked rusty. But Keira knew that it was solid on the inside. The whole interior was airtight.

To the casual observer, the cabin appeared run-down. Not worth a second glance. But examining it closely, knowing what was on the inside...

“He’s not just hiding something,” Keira murmured. “He’s hiding
himself
.”

She took one more step back. And bumped right into Calloway.

Chapter Thirteen

When Keira stumbled
, Graham’s hand came up automatically to steady her, then stayed on her elbow.

“For almost four years,” he said, his voice full of poorly disguised emotion.

She twisted a little in his grip, but not to get away. Just to face him.

“Since just around when Holly Henderson and her son were killed,” Keira stated softly.

He met her gaze. What
had
she seen inside that box? What had she read and then believed? And why the hell did what she thought matter so much more to him than the fact that she’d had a peek into his darkest secrets?

“Calloway?” she prodded.

Graham’s heart burned a little inside his chest as he replied. “Yes. You’re right. Since they were killed.”

“She was your wife, wasn’t she?” Keira asked gently.

Graham closed his eyes. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.”

There was a brief pause, and Graham wondered if his agreement had seemed like a confession. An apology. It wouldn’t be the first time. But her next words, spoken in a devastated voice, refuted the idea.

“And the little boy...”

“Not my biological son.” He opened his eyes again and saw that the pain on her face was genuine. “But I loved him like one. Every day for the last four years, I’ve ask myself if I could’ve done something differently. Something to save him.”

“Four years...” Keira said. “And you’ve been on the run ever since.”

“Not on the run,” Graham corrected bitterly. “Running implies forward movement. I’ve been hiding, just like you said.”

More than hiding.

Graham was stagnant. Stuck in the woods, surrounded by nothing but his own haunted thoughts.

When had he gone from using the cabin as a headquarters to using it as a home? He’d never meant for it to be permanent. Just a place to stay while he hung back as the details sorted themselves out. As Dave Stark did the legwork and searched for the man responsible for Holly’s and Sam’s deaths.

Graham had wanted to feel useful. He’d started collecting the newspaper articles, brought in by Dave, and made the scrapbook to keep things linear. He was so sure something in those stories would spark something in
him
, and set off a chain of events that would lead to proving he had nothing to gain from his wife’s death.

A motive.

That’s what he’d been looking for, hidden under the piles of half-truths.

Instead, the perpetual hounding, the mudslinging, all of the ignorant hatred directed Graham’s way, laid out in black and white—and sometimes color, too—left him with the feeling that he would never become a free man. Not truly. How could he, with the details of every mistake he’d ever made on display for the whole world to see?

The collection of articles had the opposite effect that it should have anyway. The finger pointers seemed right instead of wrong. Graham understood why they hounded him, why the accusations came hurling his way. His and Holly’s unhappiness was well documented. Hell, sometimes it was on public display. Some of it was on paper. If Graham had been on their end, he would be giving himself the exact same scrutiny.

Insurmountable.

That word was tossed around a lot and it stood out to Graham particularly. It’s what the evidence had become. It’s what his circumstances had become. The reason he felt it was better to stay here, locked behind his cabin door, rather than face a jury and tell a story that seemed unlikely, even to him.

When Graham realized just how desperate—how insurmountable—his situation had become, he’d tossed everything into that damned box and pushed it into a corner.

Before long, the media attention died off, and with the waning interest in the murder, the clippings became few and far between. There was a little resurgence on the anniversary date each year, but aside from that, Graham had nothing to add to his collection.

Ignoring the box had become easy.

Except he couldn’t ignore it anymore. Keira had opened it. Now she was staring at him, worry and curiosity plain on her face.

“Just ask me,” Graham commanded gruffly.

“Ask you what?”

“The same question that every person who ever heard the story, who ever saw the news, who ever read an article in that box has asked me.”

Graham braced himself for her version of it.

Did you kill them? Were you angry? In a fight? Was it an accident, maybe?

Instead, she looked him square in the face and said, “I don’t think it’s my turn, actually.”

Graham couldn’t keep the surprise from his reply. “Your turn?”

Was she kidding? Deliberately misleading him?

“I wasn’t really counting anymore,” she told him, her voice serious. “But I think I owe you at least one.”

He thought for just a minute. She wasn’t the only one who could throw a curveball.

“Are you still a six out of ten?”

“Is that what you really want to know?”

“Right this second...yes.”

Keira pursed her lips as if she was really considering it. “Still a six.”

Graham frowned. “I don’t know if it’s better than a six or worse than a six, but I know you’re lying again.”

“You sound awfully sure of that.”

“I
am
awfully sure of it,” he countered and took a step closer to her so he could run a thumb over her cheekbone. “When you lie, you get a little spot of red right
here
.”

“I do
not
.”

“You do.”

The color bloomed further, covering the rest of her cheeks. He didn’t release her face, and she didn’t pull away. Graham stroked the curve of crimson. His palm cupped her cheek, the tips of his long fingers reaching just above her delicate brow and his wrist at her chin.

A perfect fit.

“Ask me something
real
, Calloway,” she said. “Something you really want to know.”

“Did you know I was up here, when you came?” Graham replied. “Did someone tell you where to find me?”

Keira’s eyes widened. “No! Why would I... No.”

The blush drained from her face, and Graham knew she was telling the truth. He released her face with a sigh. The realization disappointed him—no, not disappointed. That wasn’t the right description. It sent a swarm of angry wasps beating through his chest, and he couldn’t pinpoint the reason.

“Let me show you something,” he said.

Graham didn’t give her a chance to respond. He slid his hand down her shoulder, then her arm, then threaded his fingers through hers. He guided her gently to the back of the house, following an unnamed compulsion.

The box of newspaper clippings sat just where he’d tossed it, right between his wood bin and the rear of the cabin. Graham ignored it.

“Right there,” he stated.

He let go of Keira’s hand and pointed at a snow-free, almost perfectly circular patch in the snow at the bottom of the cabin. It wasn’t huge and only seemed out of place when looking directly at it. Anyone walking by wouldn’t even notice the anomaly.

Graham watched as Keira’s stare traveled upward and landed on a narrow spigot, sticking out from between two of the log beams. A nearly indiscernible puff of steam floated from the metal cylinder, then dissipated into nothing.

“You could put your hand right into that and it wouldn’t even burn,” Graham told her.

“What is it?”

“It’s what you don’t see up on the roof,” Graham replied.

Her eyes widened with immediate understanding. “That little bit of steam comes from that big fire in the stove?”

“That. Or from out here.”

Graham bent down and lifted up a large, flat stone, revealing a hidden, in-ground fire pit.

“Oh!” Keira exclaimed.

Still not 100 percent certain why he was doing any of it, Graham snapped up the cardboard box and moved it a little closer to the pit.

It was high time he got rid of them. They’d never done him any good anyway. Only served as a reminder of how very little had been done in solving the case.

He slipped the lid off and reached inside for a stack of newspaper. Then he tossed it into the pit.

“I modified the woodstove into a rocket stove with a heating component. So I feed the fire—from inside or from outside—and the fire exhausts into a specialized section of wall, where it then helps to heat the house. It cools significantly before it’s finally filtered out, and by the time it gets
here
, it’s not much more than vapor,” he explained as he grabbed some more paper. “It took a year to do it, and it was worth the time.”

Graham reached into the box once more, and as he did, his hand hit something cool and metal. He shoved his hand into the mess a little farther and yanked out a familiar container.

The flask was silver. Real silver, trimmed with real gold.

A little shake told Graham it was still full.

He disregarded the nagging voice in his head that pointed out that it was barely even noon, twisted off the cap and downed a healthy gulp of the amber liquid inside.

The Macallan.

It was a Scotch Graham would never choose for himself. Just like the flask, the drink inside was a gift from his wealthy father-in-law, a man who had never tired of putting Graham into his lower place on the evolutionary scale. A man who perpetuated the witch hunt that drove him underground.

Even the smooth flavor couldn’t quite drive away the bitterness that came with it. Which was the very reason he’d dumped it into the box in the first place. To stash away the memories.

He took another swig, then offered it to Keira.

“If that’s what you gave me the night before last,” she said, “count me out. I don’t want to wind up drunk and tied to another bed.”

Graham managed to smile through his beard. “I’m afraid I only have the one bed. My alternatives are a wooden chair and a closet full of flannel.”

He meant it as a joke, but Keira shot him a serious, searching look. “Or not tying me up at all.”

“That would require a certain level of trust.”

She didn’t avert her gaze. “Does it look like I’m going anywhere?”

And Graham suddenly realized what he was showing her. What he was telling her. Why it made him wish she hadn’t found him by accident.

Because it means I really am the one putting her in danger.

“Does it look like I’m offering to let you leave?”

Her eyes went a little wider as she caught the underlying darkness in his voice. He held out the flask again.

“This is plain old whiskey. Liquid courage.” He sloshed it around.

“Do I need to be courageous?” Her question made her sound anything but.

“Always,” Graham told her firmly.

Keira took the whiskey. Graham waited until she took a sip before he spoke again.

“My great-grandfather built the cabin here for its inaccessibility. He told no one but his son—who told my dad, who told me—it was here. And as close as the resort is, to get to this spot, you need an ATV in the summer or a snowmobile in the winter. Or you need to
crash
in, I guess, like you did. And who wants to make that kind of effort? So no one knows it’s here. No one knows
I’m
here.”

“No one except for the man with the gun,” Keira pointed out.

He met her eyes. “Him. And now you. Which is a bad combination, I think.”

“A bad combination?” Keira parroted.

Graham nodded. “They found what was left of your car.”

Fear crossed her face, and he knew she was thinking about the consequences of being found. But she covered it quickly. “Who did?”

“The police found it. The man with the gun—Dave Stark—told me.”

“The police? They’ll come looking for me and—” She stopped abruptly, relief replaced by worry. “That’s not good for you, is it?”

“No, it’s not.”

“Which is what makes it bad for me, too.”

Graham nodded slowly. “I can’t let them find me up here. And I can’t let Dave get to you, either. As much as I rely on him, I’m not sure he’d make the right decision.”

That same bit of fleeting fright passed through her features. “Who is he?”

“A friend. And a business associate, I guess. I pay him well to do the things he does for me. Food. Supplies. Information. Someone I trust.” Graham paused, wondering if the last was still true. He heaved a sigh, then went on. “He suspects you’re here, Keira. If he finds out he’s right, I think it will upset the balance between us.”

“Just tell him he’s wrong.”

“It’s not that simple. Dave came up here because he was expecting
me
to come to him.”

“Why?”

“He found the man we’ve been looking for—the one who actually killed Holly and Sam. He’s come back to Derby Reach.” Graham shook his head. “I’m going after him.”

Keira stared back at him and swallowed nervously. Damn, how he hated being the source of her fear.

“What are you going to do to him?” she asked.

Graham had a list of what he’d
like
to do, and none of it was pleasant. But he wasn’t that man.

“I’m going to get a confession,” he said. “I’m going to find irrevocable proof. And I’m going to let Dave take him in.”

“That’s where you were going when you found me,” Keira stated.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No. I’m sorry, Keira,” he said softly.

She took a small step away. “You are? Why? This means what? That you’re holding me hostage?”

“Not because I want to.”

“You could just let me go,” Keira suggested.

“And then what?”

“And then I walk away.”

“Keira, just the accident by itself left too much of a chance that the wrong someone will poke their nose around and find my place. Which is what Dave pointed out. And I can’t keep you
here
, either.”

“I won’t tell anyone about the cabin. You could always take me back to the crash site and I’ll find my way out from there.”

“And you’ll do this wearing what?
My
clothes? Or that tiny dress you had on that’s barely more than a rag now? And how will you explain these stitches on your leg?”

He knew his words had an edge again, and he tried to soften them by reaching for her. But she jerked away, and that cut to the quick.