Her stomach in knots, she wasn’t sure if she was excited, or just plain nervous. She just knew she wanted so badly to see Grayson. To know him. And hoped he remembered her. But she wanted it done, a memory she could look back on. And hopefully savor.

  “I need to tell you both something before you see Gray,” Boyd started, his fingertips steepled together, his gaze trained on that steeple, not them. “Because he’s likely going to tell you himself.”

  Aimee nodded, eager to be ready, to do all she could to make the reunion a good one.

  Boyd’s brow raised as he looked up at Jackson, and the pain in the older man’s gaze, the moisture in the blue eyes, the way his lips came together, puffed out and then tightened, made Aimee’s stomach sink. He was preparing them for something bad.

  Maybe even horrible.

  She felt like she was going to cry and she hardly even remembered Grayson. Hadn’t recognized Boyd at all. Not even a vague memory.

  “Jackson’s told me what you remember,” Boyd said. “And asked how you came to know Grayson...”

  She nodded again, her hands pressed between her knees.

  “Your mother watched out for him sometimes during the day, when my father and I had to attend meetings, that kind of thing.”

  So it was as Kelly had suggested. The knowledge still brought a measure of peace.

  “He’s had the same psychiatrist all these years, Dr. James Harris. He was the head of the facility where Grayson’s been living and now he’s retiring. He’s the only person alive, besides me, who knows Gray’s full history.”

  Boyd’s gaze was back on Jackson, then. As though assessing him for something. His reaction to what was to come?

  But why would Jackson have any stake in it?

  “Mason and Adele Cooper didn’t die in a murder-suicide.” The words fell like bullets into the room. Staccato. Loud. One at a time. Painful beyond measure.

  She heard her own gasp. Felt the sharpness of the intake in her chest. And put her hand on Jackson’s knee, palm up.

  When he covered it with his own, she licked her lips, meaning to speak, but couldn’t get any words out.

  “What’s going on?” Jackson’s question came softly. His skin warm against hers.

  Boyd looked straight at Jackson. “Your father came up with the murder-suicide scenario to satisfy the coroner. And then told the mortuary that they’d died in an accident. That story was to spare the family. He handled everything like the pro he was. Said that, with only the little girl...” Boyd’s voice trailed off as he glanced at her, bowed his head in her direction and then peered at Jackson again. “There was no justice to be served, other than to clean up the mess and move on. With one caveat. Grayson had to be institutionalized for the rest of his life.”

  She was shaking her head, frowning. “I don’t understand.”

  “You’re going to tell me that Grayson killed them, aren’t you?” Jackson asked, no inflection in his tone, but there was definite pressure against her hand on his leg.

  His lips sucked inward, tears in his eyes now, Boyd nodded.

  And Aimee had to excuse herself to the ladies’ room where she lost her lunch. And probably her breakfast, too.

  Nothing made sense. None of it. How could she feel such affection for someone who’d obliterated her family?

  How could her brain not remember? Even if she hadn’t been there...she’d have known they were gone. Why couldn’t she remember anyone telling her they were gone?

  How did she trust anything anymore?

  How could... Gay Gay had been such a child...so innocent...so sensitive.

  I’d never... I wouldn’t hurt her. She heard the words in her mind, as she had before.

  Believed them.

  But...he hadn’t said he wouldn’t hurt anyone else. He’d been a boy, but in a strong, nearly adult body.

  He’d pushed her too high.

  He hadn’t known his own strength.

  She had to go. Couldn’t see him.

  Rinsed her mouth. Washed her face and hands. Dried them. Repeated the process. And pulled open the door to the hallway.

  Grayson stood there, so much older, wrinkled, and yet...astonishingly the same, too. The eyes, the way he smiled. “Aimee,” he said in his slightly thick tone. “Boyd told me you were here and I couldn’t believe him, and here you are.”

  Yep. There she was. “Gay Gay.” She didn’t want to call him by the childish name. Didn’t want to see him at all. He’d murdered her parents! But another part of her remembered how much she’d loved him. How he’d made himself her protector. Her keeper.

  I’d never... I wouldn’t hurt her.

  He never would have hurt her parents if he’d known how much that had devastated her entire life. The understanding came. Not with forgiveness. Maybe that would come, later. Maybe not.

  “You got old.” The man child said to her, his body still as athletic looking as she remembered.

  “You did, too.”

  His nod took up half of his body. Back and forth, back and forth, several times. And then he stood upright, his shoulders completely straight. “I told Boyd, and Dr. Harris, over and over and over and over and over and over that it’s my fault and I did it, and I’m sorry, and you weren’t here, Dr. Harris said, so I couldn’t tell you, but I wanted to tell you that. That I’m sorry.” Tears filled his eyes. “They took you away and I couldn’t tell you I’m sorry.” He started to cry in earnest then, and it was like she was three again, with someone so much older than her, but feeling like the older one.

  “Don’t cry, Gay Gay.” As soon as the words escaped, she knew she’d said them to him so many times. Because her childish heart had somehow understood what her adult heart couldn’t grasp. The things he did, he couldn’t help.

  “I have to go now,” the man said, and turning, strode down the hallway and through a door to another hallway.

  Somehow, she made it back through the lobby, down the breezeway, up the elevator and to Jackson’s car. She’d heard him and Boyd speaking most of the way, as the older man walked with them to the elevator before turning to go back to his brother.

  She heard about Grayson taking her too close to a cliff, about her near-fatal accident and about her father insisting that the Evergreens were going to have to put Grayson in an institution. Telling Grayson that he couldn’t come to their house anymore. Couldn’t see Aimee. And how Grayson started to cry, to try to get to Aimee, and when they wouldn’t let him, how he picked up her father’s souvenir bat out of the corner and hit him with it. And then, when her mom rushed over, hit her, too.

  She was crying as Boyd told Jackson that as a favor to Boyd’s father, to the Evergreen family, Jackson’s father had taken care of the bodies, the report, even naming the deaths as John and Jane Doe so there’d be nothing to find if anyone ever came looking. If charges had been made, and the case went to court, it would have been a huge, painful scandal for the family who had been supporting Evergreen since the town’s inception.

  And the only justice that would have come out of it would have been Grayson institutionalized for life. Clearly he wasn’t competent to stand trial. As far as records went, Mason and Adele Cooper just disappeared off the grid, as adults were allowed to do. Boyd’s father knew someone with a rig big enough to move a mobile home, paying the guy a hefty sum to do it under the table, but the guy had done a shady job and crashed the thing, and Shephard Redmond had stepped up again, arranging for Landing to come get the home. Her parents were renting to own, she’d heard. And Boyd wasn’t exactly sure where the mobile home had been parked. On some land a friend let Mason use. Boyd knew the area, but he’d never been there. He did know that Mason had built the front porch himself.

  The last piece of information was a crowning touch. Or the feather that broke Aimee’s heart.

  The answers were all there. All of them.

  Except one.

  Why couldn’t she remember any of it?

  * * *

  Humiliated, in despair for his father’s gargantuan wrongdoing, and for Aimee’s loss, as well, Jackson maneuvered traffic until they were out of Phoenix, and then pulled off into one of the many sightseeing overlooks on the way back up the mountain, and put the SUV in Park.

  Aimee hadn’t said a word since Grayson had walked away. She’d cried a bit. He’d seen her wipe her face a time or two. He couldn’t even imagine what she was thinking. Feeling.

  Figured he’d be one of the last people she’d want to talk to.

  But some things had to be said. “I’m sorry,” first and foremost.

  “For what?” Her gaze seemed truly perplexed as she glanced at him. “You didn’t know, clearly. You walked into that just like I did.”

  “No, but my father...”

  “Did what he did, Jackson. You were three. Same as me.” She shrugged.

  “If you’d never come looking...”

  “No one would ever have been the wiser.” She almost sounded as though she’d wished it had been that way.

  “I don’t know if you heard there at the end...you were already in the elevator... Boyd said he’d like to meet with you, tomorrow even, as he knows you’ll want to get back. He wants to compensate you...”

  “I don’t want anything from him.”

  “I told him I didn’t figure you would. But he’s happy to answer any questions you have about your folks. It sounds like he knew them well enough. He’d just been following my father’s mandate, to deny knowing you when I asked if he remembered you all.”

  She nodded. “I’m fine to talk to him,” she said. “It’s the right thing to do. Being polite to him. Because he’s being so kind.” She sounded as though she was talking to herself, more than to him. “And because I’m starving for more,” she said then, looking straight at Jackson. Her gaze cutting into him with the pain it bore. “More answers. More information about my parents’ lives. About my life with them.” She glanced out at the landscape in front of them, dotted by hundreds of saguaro cacti. “It’s nice of him to offer, seeing that I could be running to the papers right now about what his family had done.”

  “He’s prepared for that, too. Says it should have happened thirty years ago.”

  Boyd would have said it all directly to Aimee, but she’d walked ahead of them, leading the way virtually without pause, out of the building and back to the vehicle, stopping only to hold the elevator button when Jackson had stopped to finish his conversation.

  “He can rest easy. I don’t intend to tell anyone. Grayson is already paying for what he did. And I don’t want any publicity over it.”

  Jackson glanced over at her almost dry tone. Needing to do something for her. Anything. To take some of the anguish onto himself. Remind her that there was still good in the world.

  He needed her to know she wasn’t all alone.

  So, when they got home—the deputy watching the house signaling that all was well—and she went straight for a beer, two of them, bringing one for him, he took it. He shouldn’t have. Not with all of the emotions surging, overloading their circuits. And her potential killer still on the loose. But he did. And gulped down a fourth of it, first sip.

  And when she took his hand, looked up at him with those big brown eyes, kissed him lightly and whispered that she didn’t want to sleep alone that night, he didn’t send her upstairs as he should have done.

  He took her to bed with him.

  And loved her for hours. Hard. Soft. Quick. Slow. It was like they couldn’t stop. Couldn’t satiate the hunger, or use up all of the energy coursing through them. Couldn’t do it fast enough to outrun the bad they couldn’t change. Or slow enough for the tenderness to ease their burdens. Couldn’t relax. Or close their eyes to sleep.

  And so they just kept touching, exploring, tasting, entering, pumping, until, finally, Aimee laid her head on Jackson’s chest and dozed off.

  He slept, intermittently. Exhausted beyond measure. And awakened, too. He loved her. He knew that now. Suspected that she was the first person he ever really had loved. Shephard hadn’t been open to the tender emotion. His mother had abandoned him. His family had been a town, not people.

  And it still was.

  Aimee might be his first love, but he wasn’t going to ask her to stay with him. To the contrary, as soon as he knew she was safe out on her own, as soon as he had her want-to-be-killer in custody, he was going to push her out of his life.

  She was a city girl. Like Celeste. And he was an Evergreen boy.

  Just like his father.

  But he didn’t suffer from the god complex his father had had. And he damn sure wasn’t going to repeat the old man’s mistakes.

  He’d rather die alone than trap Aimee in a love, and a town, that would suffocate her.

  Or maybe, man that he was, who’d grown up without love, he’d rather die alone than risk living in love.

  He was his father’s son.

  Chapter 21

  Jackson was gone when Aimee got up the next morning. She’d woken, very briefly, as he’d carried her upstairs just as dawn was breaking. Remembered being cradled against him, her arms around his neck, her head tucked under his chin.

  Remembered not letting go of his neck when he first laid her down. Remembered the soft taste of his lips against hers. And then she’d been out again.

  They were going to have to talk about it—the incredible night they’d shared. But until she saw him again, she could savor it. Relish it.

  Making love with Jackson Redmond had been far more powerful than anything she’d imagined or ever fantasized about. They hadn’t spoken, other than to ask You want it like this? or Do you like that? punctuated with animalistic moans that said far more than she could ever have articulated.

  He’d given her exactly what she’d asked for, when she hadn’t even really known what she was asking. He’d known what she’d needed.

  And, based on his reactions, she knew that, in bed with him, she’d given him something great, too. The man hadn’t been shy about his pleasure.

  But day had come. The first day of living her real truth. She wasn’t just the beloved adopted daughter/niece of a successful, loving artist who saw the beauty in everything. She was the biological daughter of loving parents, one with a gambling addiction that he’d had the strength to beat, who’d been murdered by a boy they’d been trying to help.

  She’d come for her missing pieces and she’d found them.

  All that was left was finding who was after her for something she didn’t have, and she’d be free to go back to the life that was waiting for her.

  The life she and Aunt Bonnie had built together.

  The business she adored.

  For all she knew, the person who wanted her dead had already been caught. Jackson had told her when he left to call him when she woke up.

  She vaguely remembered those words vibrating softly against her lips.

  She wanted so badly to be free from the fear.

  She didn’t want to go. To leave Jackson.

  And it hit her...if Grayson was responsible for her parents deaths, had Boyd known and been trying to get rid of her to hide that secret?

  Jackson had known the man his whole life. Trusted him.

  And she trusted Jackson.

  In a floral, pink-and-white tank dress that she chose strictly for comfort and white flip-flops with rhinestones, she stood at the refrigerator, staring in, trying to talk herself into something sounding good for breakfast. She’d eat, then call Jackson.

  She wanted those last few minutes to completely savor and shiver with thoughts of the night they’d shared before the day’s sense of reality coated it all in cement.

  Disappointment crashed through her as she heard an engine outside. A vehicle, larger than Jackson’s, pulling into the circular drive. Savoring wasn’t meant to be.

  And neither, apparently, was her privacy. She had an uncharitable sense of resentment as her phone rang, and saw that it wasn’t Jackson’s number.

  It was Leon, who’d apparently been stationed outside since Jackson had left a couple of hours before to follow up on a lead.

  Catching the person who’d tried to kill her?

  Nervous for his safety, wanting to grill Leon about it, but not doing so, she told him that yes, she was up, dressed and downstairs.

  Leon said there was a visitor outside, but wouldn’t let him in unless she gave him the go-ahead.

  Boyd Evergreen.

  The deputy sheriff was holding Boyd Evergreen outside for her okay? The man could finance the Evergreen sherrif’s office ten times over.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “Jackson told me last night Boyd wanted to speak with me this morning.”

  Didn’t seem like that conversation, or meeting Grayson, had been only the previous evening. Seemed like days ago, not hours.

  Figuring it was just as well she hadn’t had any breakfast yet, she went to the door, smiled at Leon, first, and then held her hand out to the older brother of the man who’d been her friend and killed her parents, inviting him inside.

  * * *

  “He’s got beginning stage dementia, Jackson, so take that for what it is, but you need to hear what he’s saying.” In beige pants and a matching jacket, Sandra led Jackson down the hall of a nursing home just outside Evergreen. “We’ve talked to two dozen men since last night, all on that list Burley gave you, and not one of them knew anything. It’s like they’re stonewalling...”

  Not liking the sound of that one bit, Jackson sped up his step. If Sandra thought the old man who couldn’t remember his family members had something useful to say, he needed to hear what it was. But he didn’t have time to waste.