The Secret of Cherokee Cove

Nix nodded. “But not the only motive.”

“Who else?”

“We haven’t yet figured out who else from the police department Cortland might have had on his payroll. The closer we look, the more feathers we ruffle.”

“Whose feathers?”

What did she think she was going to do, go run down every police department employee who ever grumbled about the new chief’s campaign of cleaning out all vestiges of corruption? There wouldn’t be much of a force left. Even those who’d never thought a minute about taking money from Cortland resented being under constant scrutiny. Nix certainly did.

But he knew it was necessary, so he dealt with it. Others in the department weren’t quite as sanguine.

“Everybody gets tired of being a suspect,” Nix answered.

“Too bad.”

He smiled a little at that. “You must be popular with your fellow marshals.”

The withering look she shot his way might have stung a lesser man. But Nix shrugged it off. She was tense and upset. And she was clearly a woman of action, so sitting around waiting for someone else to solve the mystery of the tampered brakes had to be driving her crazy.

Ivy Calhoun had volunteered to go with the vehicle to the garage, leaving Nix to stay with the chief. Massey had asked him to stick close. Nix suspected he wanted someone there at the hospital to protect Laney and Dana.

Not that Dana needed a knight in shining armor. He’d put his money on her in a fair fight.

“Doyle wanted me to go home for the night.” She tried to hide it, but Nix heard a hint of hurt behind the words.

“Not a bad idea. The doctors have already told you he’ll live, and they’ve sedated him for the fracture reduction, so he’s probably not going to be able to talk to you again before morning.”

She winced a little at the term “fracture reduction,” the kind of pain-filled grimace that told him she’d suffered a break or two in her time. Not surprising, considering she chased fugitives for a living. “I just worry he’s in danger.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Nix said.

Her eyes narrowed. “And to keep an eye on Laney while he’s unconscious?”

He should have known she’d figure it out. “That’s my guess.”

She pushed out of her slump. “I haven’t said ‘thanks.’”

“For what? Putting on the brakes in time to keep from smashing into the wreck?”

“For taking the initiative to go look for him in the first place.”

“If I hadn’t, someone else would have.” He nodded toward her. “You were already thinking about it, weren’t you?”

“Just say ‘you’re welcome.’”

He felt a smile crack his face. “You’re welcome.”

The smile she shot back at him came complete with shiny white teeth and a set of dimples that took ten years off her age. “I don’t suppose you could give me directions back to Bitterwood?”

He pulled out his notebook and sketched a quick map for her. “Where are you staying?”

“I told Doyle I’d stay at his place. It’s closer than my hotel.”

He wondered if that was a good idea. If someone had gone after Doyle’s truck, they might have booby-trapped his house, too.

“I’ll be careful,” she said, correctly interpreting his expression. She was better at reading him than she had a right to be. He’d often prided himself on being inscrutable.

“Okay.” He pointed at the map. “This is Old Purgatory Road. Here’s the bridge. Cross the bridge and go about a mile past Smoky Joe’s Saloon, then take a right on Laurel Road. The chief’s house is at the end of the road. Can’t miss it.”

She waved the sketch at him. “Nice map. Thanks again.”

He almost shrugged off her thanks, but remembering her earlier admonition, he put on his best “plays well with others” face and said, “You’re welcome. Again.”

Ah, there came the dimples. Worth the price of admission.

She passed a pair of new arrivals on the way out, speaking to them quietly before she left. It took Nix a second to place them—Natalie and J. D. Cooper, the chief’s friends from Alabama. The redhead nodded a greeting and sat across from Nix in the seat Dana had just vacated. Her husband settled in the chair beside her.

“Detective Nix, right?” Natalie asked by way of a greeting.

Nix nodded.

“Have you seen Doyle since he arrived here?”

“Just briefly when he came in.”

“Any idea what caused the accident?”

Nix wasn’t sure he was authorized to comment on what was now an ongoing investigation.

Apparently his poker face needed more work than he realized, for Natalie’s brow furrowed. “It wasn’t an accident, was it?”

Nix cleared his throat. “I can’t really comment.”

Natalie and her husband exchanged looks. “We’ll just ask Doyle and he’ll tell us.”

“That may be,” Nix agreed. “But that’s between the chief and you.”

Natalie’s eyes flashed with irritation, but her husband put a hand on her arm. His touch seemed to settle her. “Fair enough,” she said finally. “How did he look when you saw him?”

“Kind of a bloody mess,” Nix admitted. “Had a gash on the side of his head that needed stitches, but Doyle said he hadn’t lost consciousness, so it looks like the worst of his injuries will be a broken leg.” The chief’s condition was really more than Nix should have shared with the Coopers, but given his reticence on the nature of the accident, he decided it wouldn’t hurt to share a little news that they could get with a phone call to Dana Massey. She hadn’t told them about the brake tampering on her way out, however, so he’d keep that information to himself.

“He’s a good guy. A good cop,” Natalie said, her tone a little defensive.

“Yes, ma’am,” Nix agreed.

Her eyes narrowed at his polite tone, but if she thought he was patronizing her, she didn’t say so. He wasn’t, really. The chief was a good guy and, despite his jovial, laid-back management style, he’d already proved himself to be a good cop.

Whether being a good guy and a good cop would be enough to unravel decades of bad practices, indifference and systematic corruption at the Bitterwood P.D. was a question that had yet to be answered.

* * *

DOYLE’S NEW HOME turned out to be a two-story log cabin nestled in a small, wooded hollow at the end of Laurel Road. It looked like one of those fancy tourists’ cabins you could find a dime a dozen in the Smokies, with names like Eagle’s Nest, Black Bear Lodge and Creekview. A large gravel parking area in front of the house suggested that at one time, at least, the cabin had been used for that very purpose.

A wide wooden porch with rustic log rails spanned the front of the house. After retrieving her suitcase and overnight bag from the trunk of her Chevy, she climbed the three shallow steps to the porch and pulled the keys Doyle had given her from the pocket of her jacket.

Seconds from sliding the key into the lock, she heard a noise from inside the cabin.

She fumbled behind her back for her Glock 17 and remembered, with frustration, that she’d packed it in her overnight bag, not wanting to be armed at her brother’s engagement party. Setting the bag down as quietly as she could, she crouched and worked open the side zipper, where she’d put her empty Glock and a pair of loaded magazines. Sliding the magazine into the Glock, she chambered a round and tried the door.

Unlocked.

Suddenly, the door flew open. With her hand still on the knob, she overbalanced and staggered through the opening, slamming face-first into something hard and alive.

Whoever hit her kept moving, shoving backward. Wheeling her arms to regain her balance bought her only enough time to hit the log rail with her shoulders instead of the back of her head, not that it saved her much in the way of pain. The crack of bone against wood sent painful tingles shooting down both arms, and the Glock bounced away from her suddenly nerveless fingers, skittering across the porch. The back of her head scraped against the second rail as she hit her tailbone with a jarring thud.

She scrambled for the dropped weapon, but by the time she closed her hands around the grip, the two dark figures running away across the front yard entered the woods and disappeared almost immediately into the gloom.

Grimacing with pain, she sat up and assessed her condition. She’d have a big bruise across her shoulders in the morning and a lump on the back of her head. Plus, she’d broken a heel on a brand-new pair of shoes. But it could have been much worse.

She could have been dead.

She entered the cabin with care, finding the light switch next to the door and flicking it on. To her surprise, the living room seemed virtually untouched by the intruders she’d just startled.

The same could not be said for the next room she checked. It was a corner room with big windows looking out on the dark woods. In the daytime, she supposed, the windows would probably let in a lot of light, which was probably why Doyle had chosen this particular space as his home office.

Here the intruders had concentrated their efforts. All of the drawers had been pulled out of the walnut desk against the wall, their contents lying scattered across the hardwood floor. File cabinets stood open, spilling papers and files haphazardly from their metal depths. A framed photograph lay torn in its broken frame, a jigsaw puzzle of glass covering the floor in front of it. On the wall above, there was a combination safe. It remained safely shut, though clearly someone had tried to crack the code.

Dana backed out of the study and checked the rest of the house. The kitchen drawers had all been opened and searched, some of their contents now lying in a jumble on the counter and floor. Likewise, Doyle’s bedroom had been tossed, an explosion of clothes covering every available surface, thrown aside to assist a thorough search of the chest of drawers by the bed. A second bedroom had received similar treatment, although the mess there was limited because all the drawers and the closet were empty.

Back in Doyle’s bedroom, Dana moved aside a faded Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt and sank on the end of the bed, pulling out her phone to dial 911. But before she pressed the first number, she changed her mind and called another number instead.

Natalie Cooper answered on the second ring. “Dana. Hi.”

“Hi. Are you still at the hospital?”

“Yeah. The doctor just stopped in to reassure us that Doyle was doing fine. They’re letting him wake up a little more from the reduction and then they’ll put him in a regular room.”

“Good,” she said, genuinely relieved. Her little brother was strong and tough, but things could still go wrong during any medical procedure. “By any chance is Walker Nix still there?”

“Tall, dark and silent?” Natalie asked, lowering her voice a little.

“That’s the one.”

“He’s across the room staring stoically out the window,” Natalie answered in a wry tone. “Why?”

“I need him to call me as soon as possible. Give him my cell number.”

“Is something wrong?”

Dana didn’t know how to answer that question without potentially sucking Doyle’s old friend and former partner into a procedural mess, so she hedged. “Nothing big. I just need to ask Detective Nix something about an ongoing investigation Doyle’s been involved with. Can you give him my message?”

“Sure.” Natalie hung up and Dana ended the call from her own end, trying not to be immediately impatient for the callback.

It came before she started chewing her nails. “Natalie Cooper said you wanted me to call you?” Nix’s gravelly voice rumbled like distant thunder across the telephone line.

“I know you’re there to guard Doyle and Laney,” Dana said, already beginning to second-guess her decision to bypass emergency response. “Never mind. I’ll figure out something else.”

“Wait,” Nix said before she could end the call. “Something’s wrong.”

“Yeah,” she admitted, looking at the chaos surrounding her in Doyle’s bedroom. “Something’s very wrong.”

* * *

DESPITE THE CHAOTIC condition of the chief’s study, it was the bloody mass of hair at the back of Dana Massey’s head that drew Nix’s immediate attention. “Your head is bleeding.”

Dana turned away from the mess and lifted her hand to the back of her head, looking surprised to find blood on her fingers. “I didn’t realize.”

She looked a little stunned all the way around, Nix thought. She might be a tough lady, but nobody could walk in on a burglary in progress and not be affected. That she’d had the presence of mind to snap a bunch of photos with her cell phone was notable enough. That she’d done it with a goose egg on the back of her head was damned near amazing.

“Am I dripping blood all over the crime scene?” she asked.

“No, seems to be oozing, mostly. It’s in your hair and on your shirt.”

“Damn it! This blouse is silk.”

“I’ve called a TBI unit in to process the place.” The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation offered crime scene investigation for small departments that didn’t have the manpower or need for a full-time evidence-retrieval staff.

She frowned. “At this time of night?”

“It’s not their usual procedure on a nonviolent case, but with your brother’s crash and the possible connection to Merritt Cortland—”

“Yeah,” she said with a nod. “I guess that might light a fire under them.”

“Why don’t we clear out and go somewhere until they can come in and do their work?”

“The burglars might come back.”

“So we’ll wait for the TBI on the front porch and I’ll see what I can do about that bump on your head.”

She gave him a look of frustration that he interpreted as irritation that she hadn’t caught the intruders single-handedly when she had the chance. He stifled a smile and led her out to the front porch, settling her on the steps while he went to his car to retrieve a first aid kit. When he came back, she had unzipped her bag and was trading out her pumps for a pair of tennis shoes. She waved one of the pumps at him, displaying a broken heel, before she shoved it into her bag.

She sighed and turned the back of her head toward him to give him better access. “How bad is it?”

“Not too bad, really,” he said after he’d used some antiseptic to clean the abraded area on the back of her head. “Did they hit you with something?”

She waved her hand toward the porch railing. “They knocked me back into the railing. I hit my head on the bottom rail on the way down. I thought it was just a little bump.”

“It is. It’s just a bloody one.” He applied some antibiotic ointment to the scrape, trying to ignore the way her lightly floral perfume was making his blood run hot. Her hair was thick but soft, sliding over his fingers with the same sensuous texture as warm silk. Her skin was velvety and fragrant, tempting him to bury his face in the curve of her neck and just breathe.

He’d never been a man prone to indulging his every sexual whim, but this particular dose of desire was taking a toll on his legendary self-control, and she wasn’t even showing that much skin or giving him any indication that she found him equally attractive.

He backed away, giving himself room to breathe. “I think the bleeding’s stopped now. But that shirt may be beyond hope.”

She turned on the porch step to face him. “Thanks.”

Something intriguing glittered in her eyes, pale and mysterious in the moonlight trickling through the trees. Nix knew it would be folly to speculate what that intriguing something might be. But he’d never been any good at turning his back on a puzzle. Especially one that smelled like wildflowers.

The TBI van came rumbling down the road and parked behind Dana’s dark green Chevy Malibu. Nix recognized one of the evidence techs as a man he’d known during his time in the marine corps. He dug in his memory and came up with PFC Brady Moreland. He and Moreland had been at Stone Bay, Camp Lejeune, at the same time about eight years earlier. He and the private had played pool together a few times at Maggie’s Drawers, the rec center at Stone Bay.

“Private Moreland,” he said aloud as the younger man approached.

Moreland, to his amusement, came close to snapping to attention before his expression shifted with recognition, and a grin spread over his face. “Sarge!”

They shook hands with pleasure; then Nix got down to business, introducing Dana and letting her explain what she’d walked in on.

“It happened too quickly for me to get much of a look at the intruders,” she said with regret. “I think they were wearing gloves, but I can’t be sure.”

“It’s okay,” the other evidence technician, who introduced himself as Blalock, assured her. “If there’s anything here to find, we’ll find it.”

Dana watched them enter the house, looking as if she wanted to tag along for the search. Nix distracted her by picking up her suitcase, which still lay on its side on the porch.

“I can get that,” Dana said, but Nix waved her off.

“I’ve got it.”

“You seem awfully interested in getting me away from here,” she said in a tone that was just short of suspicious. He supposed he couldn’t blame her for being wary of someone she’d met only a couple of hours earlier under less-than-pleasant circumstances.

“Mostly, I’m interested in getting us both somewhere a little warmer.”

She looked as if she wanted to argue, but headlights appeared in the dark, moving toward them on the narrow, dead-end road. The unmistakable shape of a Ford Mustang finally came into view. Laney Hanvey, Nix thought as the black Mustang squeezed into the narrow space between the TBI van and Nix’s truck.

The lady herself got out of the Mustang and hurried to where he and Dana stood on the porch, her gaze widening as she took in Dana’s bloodied condition. “My God, did they attack you?”

“Not on purpose,” Dana assured her, though Nix thought she was probably glossing over the violence of what had happened to her. “I just got bowled over and hit the porch rail.”

“I should take you to the hospital, get you checked out.”

“No,” Dana said quickly. “I’m fine, really. It looks worse than it is.”

“How’s the chief?” Nix asked.

“Groggy. The doctor wants him to stay a day or two, maybe get some rehab for the leg. You can imagine his delight.” Laney made a face, but Nix could tell that she was relieved that her fiancé was feeling well enough to complain. “The break-in just gave me an excuse to make him obey his doctor’s orders.” She glanced at the front door, which the technicians had finally shut, probably to keep out the cold. “How bad is it?”

“A big mess in some rooms,” Dana answered. “Not so bad in the others.”

“Was anything missing?”

“I’m not sure.” Dana looked apologetic. “You’d probably know better than I would.”

“I think I’ll stick around, then, see what the technicians come up with. Dana, if you’d like to stay at my place tonight, you’re welcome. It’s over in Barrowville, but that’s actually closer to the hospital.”

“I don’t want to put you out—”

“I’ll be going back to the hospital when I’m through here,” Laney said with a shrug. “You’re welcome to my guest room. The bed’s already made up. You can help yourself to anything you can find in the kitchen.”

“My car’s blocked in,” Dana said.

“I’ll drive you,” Nix offered.

Dana looked at him. “Okay. Thanks.”

Nix carried her suitcase to his truck, setting it in the back.

Dana eyed the open truck bed. “Sure it won’t tumble out?”

“That’s part of the adventure,” he murmured in her ear, sneaking a quick whiff of that floral scent that made his gut tighten with desire. He rounded the front of the truck and looked at her across the roof of the cab. “Will it fall out or won’t it?”

Her green eyes glittered with amusement in the moonlight. “Easy for you to say. They’re not your clothes.”

The truck’s heater decided to work when Nix cranked the engine, blowing a blast of cold air into his face. On the passenger side, Dana gasped and reached to close the vents.

“Give it a few minutes and it might blow warm,” Nix said, buckling up.

Dana looked at him as she belted herself in. “How badly do you want to go home in the next little while?”

He arched an eyebrow. “What do you have in mind?”

Her lips curved in a slow smile. “How about we go see a groggy man with a broken leg about a break-in?”

Chapter Three

Dana’s brother was a big guy, tall and well built, as their father had been, but lying in the hospital bed, with his leg propped up and encased in a thick white cast, he seemed shockingly vulnerable and young. His eyes were closed when she and Nix entered his room, but they fluttered open when she pulled up a chair next to his bed.

He smiled a loopy smile and flailed one arm toward her. “Hey there.”

She smiled. “Hey yourself.”

“Is it morning?” He turned his head toward the window. The curtains were closed, blocking his view of the world outside.

“No, it’s just a little after ten. We had to talk our way in past the nurses.”

He rubbed his hand over his eyes as if to clear out the sleep. He peered at Nix, who stood quietly near the end of the bed. He gave a nod. “Nix.”

Nix’s lips hinted at a smile. “Chief.”

Doyle’s brow furrowed suddenly as he turned his groggy gaze back to his sister. “How big a mess did they make at my house?”

“Not too bad,” she told him, purposefully glossing over the truth to keep him from worrying. She had stopped downstairs in the women’s bathroom to change out of her bloodstained shirt into a fresh blouse, but she hadn’t been able to comb all of the blood out of her hair, opting to pull her auburn hair back into a ponytail to hide the worst of it. The tug of the elastic on the grazed skin of her scalp wasn’t exactly pleasant, but she’d live.

“Laney’s there still?”

“Yes. She’s going to stay until the evidence technicians get through with their investigation.”

“You got the TBI out at this time of night?”

Nix’s lips twitched again. “I might have emphasized the fact that you’re the chief of police and that there have been previous attempts on your life.”

“What were they looking for?” Dana asked.

Doyle’s gaze swung back to her. “Certainly not money.”

She smiled. “No, I suppose not.”

“I don’t keep any case files at home,” he added. “Although—”

“Although what?” she prodded when he didn’t continue.

Doyle glanced toward Nix, not answering.

“I have a phone call to make,” Nix murmured, leaving the room almost as quietly as he’d entered it.

Dana pulled her chair a little closer, laying her hand on her brother’s arm. “What didn’t you want Detective Nix to hear?”

“It’s nothing, really. I don’t suppose there was any reason to try to keep it secret from him or anyone. It’s just—I’ve come across some strange information recently, and I’m not sure what to think about it.”

“What kind of strange information?”

Doyle’s focus tightened, and for the first time since Dana had entered the hospital room, he seemed to be fully awake. “Remember a few months ago when I arrested my chief of detectives for kidnapping a local girl?”

“Not exactly the sort of thing I’d be likely to forget,” she said drily.

He smiled weakly. “No, I suppose not. Anyway, during the interrogation, Bolen said something that struck me as odd when he was explaining why they’d kidnapped the girl.”

“I thought you said it was all about putting pressure on the girl’s father to keep the Bitterwood P.D. alive and kicking.”

“It was,” Doyle said with a nod. “But I didn’t tell you the rest of it.”

“There’s more?”

“A little more. See, there was a point, right before Laney and I managed to turn the tables on Bolen and his boss, that I realized they had deliberately set out to get me up there on the mountain with the missing girl.”

Dana hadn’t heard this part of the story before. “I thought you just sort of walked into the whole mess.”

“Not exactly. At the beginning, Craig Bolen had only agreed to go along with his boss’s plan because he thought they could let the girl go free when it was over. But when it became clear that she might have seen or heard too much, they knew they couldn’t let her live. So they needed a scapegoat.”