He reached across the table and laid his fingers on her hand. “It was that bad?”

  “Only in the way she looked at me. Only in the way she told me to keep my nose out of her business. I had no right to do what I did. Who am I to strip the scabs off her wounds? I just got so focused on how awful it might be that I forgot she was the one who was living it.”

  Kell squeezed her hand gently. The gesture felt so comforting that she turned her hand over and squeezed back. At some level, she had just astonished herself. But Kell was different. He was not other men.

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Jenna.”

  “Maybe I’m not being hard enough. I can’t believe how selfish I’ve become. I was totally insensitive to what that woman might feel. Why? Do I think I can somehow dash in and make it all right? Nobody can do that.”

  He rose and went to get coffee for them. “I don’t think you ever believed you could make it all right for her. But I do think we need to know something about what might be going on in that compound.”

  “That’s what I was thinking about, but I failed to think about Deborah Mixon the person. Charging ahead with a single idea stuck in my head, and damn the consequences.” She shook her head and wiped her face again, this time with a napkin from a small stack on the table. “You warned me. You asked me if I’d want to talk to a stranger about what happened to me. I didn’t hear that question right. I thought I had an entrée with my own experience. That maybe we’d find common ground.”

  “That’s not unreasonable.”

  She looked at him, her eyes feeling puffy. “Quit trying to make me feel better. I need to own up to this one before I go do it again to someone else. I have become so unbelievably self-centered!”

  She turned her head a little and saw both dogs sitting near the table. No grins there, only droopy ears. “Now I’ve upset them, too.”

  “A pat will fix them. I wish it could be as easy for you.”

  “I bet you never did anything this thoughtless.”

  “I’m sure I have, being human and all that. What’s more, the worst thing about thoughtlessness is that you often don’t even know you’ve done it because nobody bothers to tell you.”

  She held out her hand to the dogs and scratched their ruffs. At once, their ears perked and they started smiling again. One wound patched. Maybe the only one she could.

  “Let’s go out to dinner,” Kell suggested. “A change of scene might do us both some good.”

  Jenna shook her head. “I don’t feel like it. I had my out-and-abouting between visiting Barb and my stupidity today. I want a nice dark hole.”

  “Okay. I’ll run to the market and get us some subs. You might not believe it right now, but you’re going to get hungry, and letting me loose in the kitchen might be an awful mistake.”

  “I’ve made enough of those for one day.” She put her elbows on the table and at last lifted the cup of coffee he’d poured for her. A shaky sigh escaped her.

  “Well,” she said presently, “my thoughtlessness and meltdown aside, I did figure out that Deborah’s daughter was the victim and that they were both shunned by that so-called community.”

  Kell swore. “That does it,” he growled. “That bunch needs to be unmasked.”

  Hopelessness filled her. “But how?”

  * * *

  ACROSS TOWN, Deborah Mixon finally phoned the number she’d been given despite feeling hesitant. The number of a man who helped her and her daughter financially for the last month. The man who had promised to continue helping as long as she let him know if anything surrounding her daughter’s experience happened.

  “Vince?” she said shakily, still wondering how this man had found out what was behind her snatching her daughter from the Church of the Well-Lived. “A woman was here today asking about...what happened. She seemed kind enough but...”

  The voice on the other end of the phone grew gentle. “That won’t happen again. Tell me everything you know about her.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Three days later, during which she, Kell and the dogs had led what seemed like an ordinary life—too ordinary given what they now knew—the mail contained a letter.

  That surprised Jenna. Her aunt paid her bills online or had set them up for autopay. The mailbox rarely contained anything except flyers, enough flyers to make her wonder about dead trees.

  But this day it was different. She almost left the papers in the mailbox but thought how unkind it would be to the woman who delivered the mail, having to try to stuff the box with another pile of ads.

  She had almost tossed the folded flyers and envelopes into the trash when she caught sight of hand-addressed envelope. She pulled it out, then searched the ads more carefully. Real estate agents, grocery stores, life insurance offers—even an ad from a mortuary. Wouldn’t Bernice be delighted to see those?

  She dumped everything into the trash except that one letter. She studied the envelope, postmarked Charleston, and wondered if her aunt had a friend who had moved out there. But no, it was addressed to Jenna.

  Maybe one of her friends from the past? But all of them used email.

  Curious, she opened the envelope and saw a folded letter. Before she could pull it out, one small index card fell out of the envelope. The writing was in block letters and said only one thing:

  DON’T INTERFERE.

  After that, she forgot about the letter, and just stared at the card. Was it a threat?

  At once she called Kell, who had somehow become her rock. He said he’d be right over.

  * * *

  JENNA HAD SOUNDED agitated on the phone, which worried Kell. All this time, she’d seemed to take most things with an air of detachment. That detachment had shattered a few times, but her call was unusual. Something was wrong.

  He took Bradley with him, giving himself and the dog a bit of the running they both needed. Bradley was cheerful; Kell was not.

  Jenna met him at the door with Misty at her side. Instead of letting the dogs go play, Kell brought Bradley inside with him.

  “What’s up?” he asked immediately. Jenna looked the same as she always did, except that her face had grown expressionless. The detachment had returned.

  “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I’m probably overreacting, but come into the kitchen. I have something to show you.”

  When he got there, he saw the envelope and the card on the table. Neither of them sat down. Jenna handed him the card.

  He scanned it quickly. “What the hell?”

  She shrugged. “Is it a threat?”

  “Who can tell from this? And what are you interfering in?”

  “I don’t know.” Then she held up the envelope and tugged the letter out of it. “I haven’t read this yet, but maybe it has an answer.”

  It had more of an answer than either of them could have imagined.

  Dear Vince,

  I know it’s been over ten years since you saw me, but you kept sending me birthday presents, so I’m sure you give a damn about me. I need to tell you what happened after the last time I saw you.

  My stepfather, Aloysius Bund, pastor of the Church of the Well-Lived in Conard City, started abusing me when I was ten years old. I was terrified and ashamed, but I didn’t know he was the one who was wrong.

  The entire sordid story filled the two pages, written in an almost girlish hand. The two of them leaned over it, reading, then Kell scanned it a second time. “My God.” He looked at Jenna and saw she was weeping silently.

  “My God,” she murmured shakily. “Oh my God. That poor girl...”

  At last, her silent tears turned into sobs, and Kell didn’t care what kind of risk he was taking. He took Jenna into his arms, hugging her, holding her while she cried her heart out. Holding her until her anguish subsided.

  “Somebody needs to die for this,” he said, his voice steely.

  “Maybe two people already have,” she choked out.

  “I’m going to kill that bastard.”

  She eased away from him. “What? And ruin your own life, too? We’ve got to take this to the sheriff. Maybe he can do something.”

  But Kell was having trouble getting a handle on himself. Jenna had cried, thank God, but he had no such relief. Disgust and fury roiled through him equally. He needed an outlet.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “Now. Because if I don’t do that I’m going to do something else. I swear, that man isn’t fit to walk the face of this planet.”

  “I know,” she said quietly. She grabbed a paper towel and wiped her face. “Okay, I’m ready.”

  He saw a new determination in her step as they set out without the dogs. Just a few blocks. Maybe just enough time to keep him from erupting. Maybe.

  Jenna marched alongside Kell, feeling like part of a unit for the first time since...

  She cut that off. She didn’t need to be thinking about her past just then. She needed to be thinking about that godforsaken church and little girls. More than one little girl.

  Gage was, as always, sitting behind a stack of papers and the computer on his desk.

  “I never should have taken this damn job,” he said as he waved them to seats.

  “Why did you then?” Kell asked.

  “Well, you see, there was the former sheriff, Nate Tate. Still known as the ‘old sheriff’ while I am still known as the ‘new sheriff.’ Regardless, that man is well loved in this county, and over my objections, he put me up for this job when he retired. I got elected only because of his endorsement, I’m sure. I didn’t want to disappoint him, so here I sit pushing paper all day. What’s up?”

  “Jenna?” Kell said, looking at her.

  She shook her head mutely. She couldn’t bring herself to talk about any of it, not her own experience, not the Mixon girl’s experience, not about the horrifying letter. She was feeling raw again.

  “Okay, I’ll do my best,” Kell said. “You know we never believed the Zeb and Hassen deaths were natural.”

  “I’m inclined to agree,” Gage nodded. “But there’s nothing in the tox results that would warrant an investigation because of their health problems.”

  “Right. So the two of us wanted to find a way behind the walls of that group. But we were getting nowhere until Jenna heard about the mother and daughter who fled the compound. That set her on fire, and I pretty much agreed with her suspicion.”

  “I can see why. I never thought about the two of them. Low on my radar. I mean, two people leave that church. Anything’s possible and it’s certainly not a crime.”

  Kell agreed. “I didn’t much think about it either when Barb Traynor told me about it. I was picking her brain for some information about that group, and the Mixon woman and her child came up. That’s when Jenna made up her mind to find out why the two of them had left.”

  Gage rocked his squeaky chair a couple of times. He looked at Jenna. “It was the daughter part that got your attention?”

  “Yes,” she answered firmly. “Apparently, they left the group with nothing but the clothes on their backs. I couldn’t stop wondering what made them do that.”

  “Good question, now that you bring it up. So what next?”

  Kell looked at Jenna, and she finally took over the discussion. “I visited Deborah Mixon to see if I could learn anything from her.”

  “Why should you learn any more than anyone else in this county?” Gage asked her.

  Here was the moment she’d been dreading. She closed her eyes, wondering if she could spit out the words yet again. Knowing she had to for the sake of some young girls. For the sake of Deborah Mixon’s daughter, who could never speak about it. She drew a deep breath, ignoring her hammering heart, and said, “I was raped, too. And nobody believed me. Ms. Mixon said that she and her daughter had been shunned.”

  “Shunned?” Gage repeated the word, raising the one brow that hadn’t been stilled by the fire that had scarred his face. “Shunned?”

  “That’s the word she used.” Jenna fought to calm herself but wasn’t succeeding very well. All the feelings she’d just begun to deal with surged to the fore, nearly taking over. Her internal battle had freshened. No time for that now. “She sort of intimated that something had happened to her daughter. I just filled in a blank. I could have been wrong, except...” She couldn’t continue. She looked at Kell.

  He nodded to her and turned to the sheriff. “Then this, just three days later.” He passed the envelope to Gage.

  Gage took it and opened it, pulling the letter out and seeing the card flutter to his desktop. He picked up the card first, scanned it, then looked at Jenna. “This looks like a threat.”

  “Read the copy of the letter,” Kell said.

  Gage unfolded it, the expression on his face growing darker by the moment. Then he tossed it onto his desk and cursed a few unprintable words. “That poor girl. We were all stunned when she killed herself, but we all thought something had happened to her in the war. Evidently not.”

  He pulled a yellow tennis ball out of a mug on his desk and hurled it hard against the row of filing cabinets. It bounced off, then rolled across the floor. “That didn’t help much,” he remarked a minute later. “Nothing’s going to help this one.”

  “Except rooting it out,” Kell said.

  Gage nodded, then looked at the letter. “Part of the worst of it is that I can’t do anything about it.”

  Jenna stiffened, hearing in his statement something similar to what she had faced. Anger caused words to burst out of her. “Why not? How can you let this go on? How can anyone let this go on?”

  Gage sighed heavily looking down at his desktop. “There’s a difference between knowing something and having useful evidence. Horrible in this case. But what do we have here? A letter making a claim I can’t substantiate. A woman and her daughter who should have filed a complaint so that I could do something about this. And a veiled threat from a person or persons unknown.” He held up the envelope. “Nothing but a postmark. Useless. And even if we could find this guy, all he’d be able to do is repeat what’s in this letter.”

  Gage dropped the envelope and steepled his hands. “I need to talk to the county attorney. See if she can figure a way around this. Something about dying utterances, maybe. But that still assumes Celia wasn’t lying, which is what I might hear.” He shook his head sharply. “Well, maybe there’s one thing I can do right now.”

  “What’s that?” Jenna asked, her hands still clenched until her nails bit into her palms.

  “It’s not much, but I can sure make these people feel uncomfortable when they show up in town.”

  “How?” Jenna demanded.

  “Cops can stalk, you know.” One corner of Gage’s mouth lifted, but the expression wasn’t humorous. “Perfectly legal for us to keep a close eye on people we believe are suspicious.”

  “Better than nothing,” Kell remarked.

  “Oh, much better,” Gage said. “We can make them antsy as all hell.”

  When Jenna and Kell rose to leave, Gage said, “Jenna?”

  She turned to look back. “Yes?”

  “I’d thank you for your service, but I get the feeling you wouldn’t appreciate that.”

  “You’d be right.”

  * * *

  ON THE WALK BACK, Kell could tell that Jenna was fuming. Once inside the door, with the dogs dancing all around them, she asked, “What good is the law?”

  “I can understand Gage’s position.”

  “Yeah, no proof, no dice. You have to make a complaint. Well, where does that get you?”

  Kell nearly winced. Inevitably, she headed for the kitchen. “I miss Bernice, but I’m glad she’s not here. She’d know something was wrong with me, and she wouldn’t let it go. I don’t want her to be upset, too.”

  She pawed around in the refrigerator and came up with some sliced cheese and hard salami. She put them on a plate on the table, then sat, picking at them. “Help yourself.”

  While he liked cheese and salami, he also knew that was far from a balanced diet. But she was the nurse. He took a slice of cheese and wrapped it around a piece of salami.

  Mostly he stared at her across the table. She was still angry, absorbed in her own thoughts. Then she looked up.

  “I mean it, Kell. What good is the law? You go to someone with a legitimate complaint, and they want to see the evidence. If Deborah Mixon’s daughter had complained, where would it have gotten her? Any witnesses are inside that compound and would probably have lied their heads off anyway. All she’d have done was lay herself bare. There’d be no justice. Her mother was right to keep it secret.”

  He remained silent, knowing she needed to rant. Hell, he wanted to rant, too, just differently. He knew what she was saying, though. Yeah, the law needed evidence, but too many women, even with the evidence, ran into a stone wall. Accusations that they must have done something wrong. Sneers and leers and whispers. Jenna must have faced that, too, along with the dismissal of her charges. Something like her claims wouldn’t remain secret for long.

  God Almighty.

  She continued speaking, anger contained in every word, not even touching the food she’d put out. “So, now we know what Zeb’s secret was. He was one of those who lied and stood aside. The world’s full of them. And Celia...my God, Celia. To be betrayed not once but twice. It’s no wonder she took her own life. How hopeless do you have to be?”

  “That’s pretty hopeless,” he agreed cautiously. Part of him was glad Jenna was expressing herself so strongly, but the rest of him desperately wanted to pull her out of the pit she’d fallen into. The only thing he could do now, however, was let her blow off that head of steam that had probably been growing inside her for some time.