A Widow's Guilty Secret

Not for a lot of people.

“Did you forget your key?” Suzy called out as she yanked open the front door in response to the ringing doorbell.

It wouldn’t have been the first time that Peter had forgotten his house key. But if everything went right, it would be one of the last, she thought.

Suzy did her best to contain the nervous anticipation that all but vibrated through her. She’d been up for most of the night, not because of the baby, but because she kept hearing Peter come through the door.

Each and every time it just turned out to be her imagination, hard at work. What that meant, she decided, was that she really wanted to get this divorce matter out and on its way.

Throwing open the front door, she found herself on the receiving end of a surprise. And not the pleasant kind, she couldn’t help thinking.

Suzy instinctively took a step back.

Her hand on the doorknob, she started to close the door again, intent on locking out the strangers on her doorstep.

The sheriff’s wife was quick, but Nick was quicker. He blocked her motion with his hand, at the same time putting his foot over the sill to keep the door from closing.

“We need to talk with you, Mrs. Burris,” Nick said as his tongue-tied partner appeared somewhat startled by her behavior and all too ready to retreat.

Nick watched as suspicion came and then went from the pretty blonde’s cornflower-blue eyes. She appeared to regard them both in silence for a moment, then said in a hushed tone, “You know my name. Why is it you know my name?”

She had a bad feeling about this—and it was escalating by the moment as she waited for an answer. She looked from one man to the other, then back at the older detective. Waiting.

“Would you mind if we stepped inside, Mrs. Burris?” Nick suggested, gesturing into her house. He was surprised when she remained planted before him. “This isn’t the kind of thing a person likes to hear while standing in the doorway of her house.”

Suzy raised her chin, thinking herself already prepared for the worst. “Sitting on the sofa isn’t going to change whatever it is that you have to say to me, Detective …” She deliberately let her voice trail off, waiting for the tall, strikingly handsome dark-haired man to fill in the blank.

“Jeffries,” he told her, then nodded toward Juarez. “And this is Detective Juarez,” he added before going back to what she’d said. “No, it won’t,” Nick readily agreed. “But it just might help you to cushion the shock—no pun intended,” he interjected when his own words played themselves back in his head. He didn’t want her to think he was being flip at her expense.

Cushion the shock. Just how great a shock, she wondered. Suzy felt oddly numb, yet still somehow in control. Or so she told herself.

“Is he hurt?” she asked in a voice so quiet, it was almost a whisper. “Is my husband hurt?” she amended when neither man standing on her doorstep answered her.

“It’s worse than that, ma’am,” Nick told her, trying to be as gentle as possible.

Suzy felt her stomach lurch, then turn over. She struggled to pull herself together. She could handle this, she told herself. Whatever the somber-looking detective in the dark suit had to tell her, she could handle it. She could handle anything. She had to. She had practically a newborn depending on her. She had to remember that.

“May I see some identification, please?” she requested, holding whatever the older detective was about to say to her at bay.

Juarez fumbled for his wallet, searching his pockets, while Nick took his out and flipped it open to display his badge and ID.

Suzy could feel panic well up inside her. She barely glanced at the man’s wallet, but his image registered.

“Worse than hurt,” she heard herself repeating as she raised her eyes to the man’s face. That could only mean one thing. Her lips felt frozen as she asked, “Is my husband dead, Detective Jeffries?”

Nick felt a wave of pity stirring. “I’m sorry to have to tell you that, Mrs. Burris, but yes, I’m afraid he is.”

Every inch of skin on her body alternated between extreme heat and extreme cold.

Dead.

Peter’s dead.

She waited for the wave of sorrow, of devastation to hit. But it didn’t. In its place, instead, was guilt. Guilt that she didn’t feel grief over his death, other than the kind of grief she might have experienced after hearing of a neighbor’s death.

What kind of a person was she? Suzy silently demanded.

“You were right,” Suzy said to the older detective, her voice sounding rather tinny to her ears as the words seemed to echo in her head.

“Right about what?” Nick asked, puzzled as he looked at her.

It was getting hard for her to breathe. “About this being easier to take on a sofa.”

It was the last thing Suzy remembered saying before the bright, sunny world filtering in through her doorway went completely black.

Chapter 2

Nick prided himself on the fact that his reflexes had always been quick. This time was no exception.

One minute he was talking to the unfortunate, freshly minted widow. The next he was stretching out to catch her and keep her head—as well as the rest of her—from hitting the floor.

Beside him, Juarez stood frozen, almost in as much shock, in his own way, as the sheriff’s widow. His partner was definitely in need of a crash course that would teach him exactly how to be a useful member of the police force. Right now, the man was undoubtedly well meaning, but also rather useless. The man had a great deal to learn before he could be considered a good detective.

Nick was fairly convinced that Jason Juarez had found himself in his present position only because he was related to someone either on the force, or someone who was embedded within Vengeance’s less-than-dynamic town counsel. Whichever it was, the so-called guardian angel might be trying to be kind to the young man, but in the interim, he or she was setting the course of detective work back by half a century.

Juarez, he knew, was relieved when the FBI special agents had descended on the town and, specifically, the “dig” where the bodies had been found. They’d been summoned by the town fathers because one of the victims was Senator Merris. The special agents had been set to take over the entire crime scene, but he had managed to get them to agree that this would be worked as a team effort. That meant that information would be shared—supposedly.

Nick turned his attention to the woman he’d just caught. When he’d made his initial assessment of her, he’d judged that she weighed under a hundred pounds. If he wasn’t right on target, he was close. Suzy Burris felt as if she weighed next to nothing at all.

Striding into the house ahead of the flustered Juarez, his arms full of unconscious damsel in distress, Nick headed straight for the sofa.

“Get the door, Juarez,” he tossed over his shoulder at his partner.

It took the detective a second to process the order, and another second for embarrassment to creep up his lanky torso, reaching his cheeks and turning them a faint shade of pink.

“You want it closed?” he asked.

“No, I want you to take it off the hinges and take it with us when we leave,” Nick bit off sarcastically as he lay the woman down on the sofa. “Yeah, I want it closed,” he snapped quickly before the befuddled, wet-behind-the-ears detective took him at his word and started removing the door from its hinges. He wouldn’t have put it past him.

The door shut and then he heard Juarez hurrying over to the sofa.

“Is she—is she all right?” the younger man asked nervously. He shifted slightly from foot to foot as he hovered about like a confused hummingbird, searching for a destination where he could alight.

“She just found out that her husband’s dead, what do you think?” Nick asked, trying not to let his irritation break through. Part of that irritation had to do with the fact that he had yet to tell the woman the worst part: that her husband had been murdered.

No doubt feeling foolish, Juarez looked down at the unconscious woman. “I guess she’s not all right.”

There was sympathy in the younger man’s voice.

At least he had the right emotional response, Nick thought. That was a start, although being too sympathetic wasn’t a good thing, either. Nick was convinced of that. It wasn’t exactly recommended for someone in their line of work. Getting too involved could get in the way, clouding their judgment and hindering them from doing their job right.

At least, that had been the case back in Houston.

Out here, when he’d accepted the job, he’d just assumed that police work involved tracking down lost dogs and occasionally finding a child who had wandered off from his or her parents. Solving homicides like the ones they were faced with came as a complete and utter surprise to him. While it was, sadly, right up his alley, Nick had come to Vengeance to take an extended break from that sort of thing.

Still, he had to admit that part of him felt suddenly alive again. He hadn’t missed the nonstop pressure of the life he’d led as a detective in Houston, but he did find that he missed the challenges that sort of life had perpetually thrown at him.

At least occasionally.

“Make yourself useful,” he instructed Juarez. “Get me a compress for her head.”

The younger detective looked a little lost as he glanced about the room, as if searching for something to use to make this happen.

Nick sighed. This partnership was going to test his patience. If Juarez got in the way, the feds were going to want them both off the case—and as far as he was concerned, Vengeance was now his town and that made the murdered men his case.

“Kitchen, towel.” Nick snapped out the words in staccato fashion, firing them at Juarez as if they were bullets. “Make it wet. Cold water,” he emphasized as Juarez headed toward the section of the house where he assumed the kitchen was located. “Don’t forget to wring it out,” Nick added, raising his voice so that the other man could hear him.

Otherwise, Juarez would probably be bringing him a towel that left a trail of dripping water in its wake.

A beat later, Juarez cheerfully called back, “Got it!”

Nick shook his head, mentally telling himself to be patient.

When he glanced back down at the sheriff’s widow, her eyes were open and she looked up at him, appearing somewhat dazed.

“Welcome back,” he said, then placed his hands on her shoulders in gentle restraint as Suzy tried to sit up. “I’d hold off on that for a couple of minutes or so if I were you,” he counseled, then added with a marginally amused smile, “Remember what happened the last time you ignored my advice.”

Suzy sighed and remained where she was, even though it made her tense to lie down in a stranger’s presence. For a second, she closed her eyes again, trying to regain her bearings.

“This isn’t some cruel joke, is it?”

He heard the hopeful note in her voice and caught himself feeling sorry for her. The next moment, he banked down that emotion. He knew from experience that that was only asking for trouble.

“I’m afraid not.”

She opened her eyes to look up at the man who had unwittingly thrown her world into such turmoil. “Peter’s really dead?”

“He’s really dead,” Nick confirmed. “His body was found in a shallow grave by a group of geology grad students.” After that, all hell had broken loose. It was going to be hard keeping a lid on the investigation, what with the news media already poking around.

Suzy was having trouble thinking, trouble processing this. She’d been so focused on telling Peter she wanted a divorce that this had completely thrown her for a loop.

And unleashed a great deal of guilt.

“How did he die? Was it a car accident?” she asked hoarsely.

“No.” His voice was emotionless, giving nothing away. “The sheriff appeared to have been choked to death.”

Her eyes widened in astonishment. “Someone killed him?”

Nick nodded, thinking that, all things considered, she was handling this rather well. “It certainly looks that way.”

“Who?” she whispered, hardly able to force the word out.

“That’s what we’re currently trying to find out,” Nick told her honestly.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other detective approaching. Contrary to instructions, Juarez had brought back a dripping towel. He held it out to Nick like a peace offering.

Nick made no attempt to take it from him. “Mrs. Burris is conscious again, Juarez. We won’t be needing that now.” Then, because the detective appeared to be at loose ends as to what to do with the now unnecessary towel, Nick ordered, “Take the towel back to the kitchen, Juarez.”

Happy to be given instructions to follow, the younger man quickly retraced his steps and eagerly did as he was told.

“You’re very patient with him,” Suzy observed.

It struck her as odd, even as she said the words, that she would notice something so insignificant, given what she’d just been told. Was she going crazy? Or was she just being insensitive to Peter’s fate? Neither answer seemed like the right one.

Nick shrugged off the comment and the implied compliment behind it. “He reminds me of my kid brother,” he told her. He hadn’t realized that until just now, he thought, but now that he’d said it out loud, he realized that Juarez and Eddie had the same lost puppy appeal, the same eagerness to please.

It took him a second to realize that the sheriff’s widow was asking him something.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, can I sit up now?” she repeated. She didn’t feel up to being restrained again. She wasn’t even certain just how she’d react to that.

Right now, all sorts of emotions collided within her as disbelief, anger, guilt and a sliver of relief all vied for practically the same space.

The last reaction made her ashamed. Peter had been, after all, her husband and the father of her child, relief over his death, even the barest hint of it, shouldn’t be entering into the equation, she upbraided herself.

Even worse was what was missing.

What she realized was conspicuously missing was grief. Where is the grief? she silently demanded. Shouldn’t she be feeling that predominately instead of all these other emotions that were racing through her?

What was wrong with her?

“Slowly,” the detective was saying to her.

She blinked, confused. Had she missed something? “What?”

“You can sit up,” Nick repeated. “But do it slowly,” he cautioned. “You really don’t want to get dizzy and pass out again.”

She didn’t like the frailty his warning implied. It wasn’t as if she was made out of spun glass. If she had been, she would have shattered long before now.

“That was the first time I ever passed out,” Suzy informed him with a touch of annoyance in her voice.

“First time you had a husband who was murdered, I suspect,” Nick speculated.

Suzy flushed. She could feel the color rising to her cheeks, making them hot.

“Yes,” she answered hoarsely, waiting to see where he was going with this.

“Drastic news brings out drastic results,” he told her matter-of-factly. “Want some water?” Without waiting for an answer, he glanced at Juarez. His partner was just coming back into the room. “Juarez, get Mrs. Burris a glass of water.”

Without a word, the other detective turned on his heel and went back to the kitchen.

“Makes him feel useful,” Nick said in response to the protest he saw hovering on the widow’s perfectly formed lips.

“You always anticipate everything?” she couldn’t help asking.

He flashed her another amused smile. Amid the vulnerability, he detected a feisty streak. He found it rather appealing.

“Saves time,” he told her. “But no, I don’t always anticipate everything, just the obvious things.”

“Like my fainting,” she assumed.

“Being told that a spouse was murdered usually comes as a shock to the person doing the listening,” he said, never taking his eyes off hers.

Suzy heard the detective’s emphasis on the telltale word: usually. Did that mean he thought that she was innocent, or did he actually think she had something to do with Peter’s murder? If the latter, she knew she should be outraged at the very idea, but she still felt too drained, too devastated by the news, to summon that sort of a response.

“It did,” she told him as firmly as she could, the look in her eyes challenging him to say something different.

Juarez had returned with a tall glass filled to the very brim with water. Nick put his hand out for it, then offered it to the widow.

Suzy took the glass with both hands to hold it steady and drank deeply. Strange as it seemed, the cold water helped her pull herself together and focus.

She couldn’t allow herself to go to pieces. There was no one around to help her put those pieces back together again. No one to really rely on, except herself.

Just like the old days.

“Thank you,” she said to Juarez, offering him the near-empty glass. Her words elicited a shy smile from the young detective as he took the glass from her.

“My pleasure, ma’am.”

Ma’am. She was way too young to be a ma’am. Or maybe she wasn’t. After all, she was someone’s mother now.

“You up to some questions?” the other detective asked her. She nodded, wanting to get this over with. “When did you last see your husband?”

“Yesterday morning at breakfast.” That seemed like a hundred years ago now, she thought. Had it only been a mere twenty-four hours?

“Did he seem particularly preoccupied or troubled to you?” the detective asked.

She looked at this stranger for a long moment, wondering how to answer his question. Did she tell him that she and Peter had grown apart? That they hardly spoke to one another these last few days, except to talk about the baby? Or did she keep her secret and pretend that everything had been just fine?

Pressing her lips together, Suzy paused for a moment as she searched for some plausible middle ground. “If you’re asking me if he seemed different than usual yesterday, the answer is no, he didn’t.”

Her words, Nick noted, were carefully orchestrated. He read between the lines.

“How long have you and your husband been having marital problems?” he asked gently.

The question surprised not only Suzy, but the other detective as well. Juarez stared at him, openmouthed. “You didn’t tell me you knew the sheriff and his wife, Nick,” Juarez said, sounding slightly irritated at being shut out this way.

“I don’t, do I, Mrs. Burris?” Nick asked, looking at the woman.

She didn’t bother addressing his last question as she focused on the one that not only caught her off guard, but upset her, as well. She didn’t want any dirty laundry to mar Peter’s memory. As far as the people in the county were concerned, he was an exemplary sheriff.

“What makes you think we were having problems?” she asked.

The question told him all he asked. He was right. Had there been no problems, she might have issued an indignant denial, or at the very least, stared at him as if he was being boorish. But she didn’t. She was defensive. Because there was something to be defensive about.

“Let’s just say I’ve been there,” he answered evasively.

This wasn’t about him, and Nick had no intentions of revisiting his own failed attempt at marital bliss. He’d married far too young and it had all fallen apart on them not that long after the vows. In keeping with his marriage, he’d been divorced young as well. He’d learned a lesson along the way: He was no good at marriage.

“Were you two talking?” he asked, trying to sound as kind as he could under the circumstances.

“Yes,” she snapped back, then shrugged helplessly as she amended, “But just barely.” She paused again, searching for a way to phrase what she wanted to say. “We’ve just had a baby—”

“Congratulations,” Juarez said with enthusiasm. “Me, too. I mean, my wife, too—except not yet. I mean—”

“He means his wife’s due anytime now,” Nick interjected. He’d heard about nothing else this entire last week. “Go on,” he coaxed Suzy, “you were saying …?” He trailed off, waiting for her to fill in the blanks.

“Despite that, Peter’s been rather distant lately,” she admitted.

The next moment, she regretted the words. Why was she baring her soul to these men? What did any of this have to do with whoever had killed Peter?

“Some men feel threatened by a baby,” Nick told her, recalling what he’d once heard. “They think that they’re being replaced in their wives’ affections.”

Suzy shook her head. She wanted to stop any further conjecture before it got too out of hand.

“Having the baby was Peter’s idea,” she told him, then added, “he thought that the baby would bring us closer together.”

He noticed she didn’t say “again,” which meant that they probably hadn’t been all that close to begin with. Nick decided to press a little further. “How bad did it get?”

Enough was enough. Suzy’s own protective instincts, the same one that had her protecting her sister from their parents’ inebriated wrath, kicked in.

She glared at this intruding detective. “What does any of this have to do with my husband’s murder?” she demanded.

“Just trying to establish the sheriff’s frame of mind the last few days before he was killed,” he replied matter-of-factly.

She really didn’t like exposing her private life like this to strangers, but then, what did it matter, anyway? Peter was dead and that meant her world would have to go through some pretty drastic changes—even faster than she’d initially anticipated. After all, she had been planning to divorce Peter. All in all, a divorce was rather a drastic life change in itself.

She blew out a breath and plunged in. “I was going to ask Peter for a divorce when he got home last night.” She addressed her words to her shoes, not feeling up to making eye contact with the detective who was doing all the questioning right about now.

But then, he’d probably take that as some sort of a silent admission of guilt, she realized. Blowing out another breath, she forced herself to look up at the man.

“Except that he didn’t,” she said quietly once she’d reestablished eye contact.

Something sharp pricked at his insides the moment their eyes met. Nick tried to shrug it off. It didn’t budge.

“I see,” he said without a shred of emotion evident in his voice, successfully masking his feelings.

It was at that moment that Detective Nick Jeffries made a stunning and rather uncomfortable discovery. He realized that he was attracted to this woman, deeply attracted. Moreover, it wasn’t just her delicate looks that had hooked and reeled him in, it was her underlying vulnerability, which he could see she tried to cover up at all costs.

But the very existence of that vulnerability had awakened his dormant protective streak, a streak he had thought he’d successfully laid to rest more than a few years ago.

Apparently, he’d thought wrong.

Chapter 3

As Nick tried to bury this unsettling and somewhat annoying realization, Juarez’s cellphone rang.

Juarez snapped to attention and seemed to go on high alert even before he pulled his phone out of his pocket. He blinked, clearing his vision, and then looked at the screen to identify the caller.

Rather than just answer it, the young detective continued to stare at the name, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Finally, he glanced up at Nick and said numbly, “It’s my wife.” The next moment, he shivered as a sudden attack of nerves seized him. His mouth choked out, “This could be it.”