The Secret of Cherokee Cove

“You don’t mean you were supposed to be the scapegoat.”

Doyle shrugged, grimacing a little, as if the movement pained him. “I was new in town. I had a vested interest in keeping the police department going.”

“That’s ridiculous. Who’s going to buy a story like that?”

“That’s what I asked Bolen.” Doyle covered her hand where it lay on the edge of his bed. “That’s when Bolen said something strange. He told me I was a Cumberland, and everybody in Bitterwood knows the Cumberlands are crooks and swindlers and baby-killers. He said no good ever came from a Cumberland in these parts.”

Dana frowned. “Mom’s maiden name was Cumberland.”

“I know.”

“She never talked much about her past.” Dana looked thoughtfully at her brother. “But we knew she came from somewhere around here, didn’t we? That’s why she and Dad were here when they had their accident.”

“Yes. So I’ve been doing a little asking around. And while I don’t put a whole lot of stock in much of what Craig Bolen has to say these days, he was right about one thing.” Doyle’s brow furrowed as his troubled gaze met hers. “People around here seem ready to believe the Cumberlands are capable of just about anything bad.”

* * *

NIX CHECKED HIS WATCH, wondering how much longer Dana Massey intended to stay in the room with her brother. He’d already worked a full day and his night hadn’t exactly been uneventful. He could use some sleep.

But if he was honest with himself, his growing impatience had less to do with going home and getting some shut-eye and more about getting another eyeful of Dana Massey’s long legs, shapely figure and intelligent green eyes.

She is not the woman for you, he reminded himself, closing his gritty eyes against the harsh artificial light in the otherwise empty waiting room. And not just because she’s leaving town in a few days.

He wasn’t sure that such a woman existed, for that matter. He’d gone thirty-six years without finding a woman who would put up with his cynicism or his emotional reserve. It had been easier to live with that knowledge when he was full-time military, because war was hell on marriages. He’d seen the corrosive effects of long tours of duty, the stress on families trying to stoke the home fires when any moment could bring devastating news from a world away.

But he’d been a civilian for five years now without finding a good woman and settling down.

What’s your excuse now, hotshot?

“Falling asleep on me, Detective?”

He opened his eyes at the sound of Dana’s low voice. She stood in front of him, the hint of a smile on her lips. But her amusement didn’t make it all the way to her eyes. Her night had been even worse than his, and it showed in the faint pallor beneath her tan and the dark shadows under her eyes. “You ready to go?”

She nodded, and he pushed to his feet, falling into step with her as they headed for the elevator. She was quiet all the way to the car, buckling in without speaking. But there was an edge to her silence, hints of a gathering storm.

It struck halfway back to Bitterwood.

“What do you know about the Cumberlands?”

His back stiffened for a second at the sound of the name, and he shot Dana a quick look. In the blue glow of the dashboard lights, her strong profile seemed carved in cool marble, both beautiful and unapproachable.

He’d like to paint her like that, too, he thought.

“Why do you ask?” he said.

“Do you know anything about my family background?”

He didn’t like the direction this conversation was going. “No.”

“My mother’s maiden name was Tallie Cumberland. Ever heard of her?”

The stiffness in his back returned, flowing all the way to his hands until they white-knuckled the steering wheel. The dread ran through him like ice in his blood, freezing him as if he were still that little boy from Cherokee Cove who believed every tale his mama told him, especially the scary ones.

“Don’t even look at a Cumberland,” she’d warned him from the time he was old enough to walk around on his own two feet. “They’re cursed, and they’ll spread their sickness on you.”

His father hadn’t been superstitious at all, but even he had spoken of the Cumberlands in hushed tones, dire warnings blazing in his eyes.

“You have heard of her,” Dana said.

“I’ve heard of the Cumberlands,” he admitted.

“Doyle says that when he mentioned the name, people reacted as if he’d just said a curse word.”

“Does he know why?”

“Not specifically. The most anyone would tell him is that the Cumberlands are nothing but trouble.”

“Does that sound anything like your mother?” he asked carefully.

“No.”

“Then I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Dana didn’t say anything else until they reached the Bitterwood city limits. Even then, she merely said she’d told Doyle she was going to stay at his house. “He didn’t like it, but I’m older than he is, so I win.”

Nix smiled, thinking of his own younger brother and how often he’d invoked the older-sibling rule when they were growing up. “Are you sure you feel safe there? Someone was able to get into the house pretty easily.”

“I’m armed and I’m too wired to sleep,” she answered, slanting a look of raw determination his way. “Bring it on.”

“I could stick around.”

“And protect the poor, defenseless girl?”

“Not what I said.”

She sighed. “I’m usually not this prickly. It’s been an unsettling night.”

“I’m serious about sticking around. And not because I don’t think you can take care of yourself. But you said there were two intruders. Couldn’t hurt to have an extra set of ears to listen out for danger.”

“And it wouldn’t hurt to have some extra firepower,” she admitted. “But it’s a lot to ask.”

“You didn’t ask. I offered.”

“So you did.” Her lips curved in a smile that softened her features, making her look far more approachable than she had seemed for most of the drive.

Far more dangerous, too, he reminded himself.

The TBI technicians were still there when they arrived, but they were packing up to leave. Laney was outside with them, talking to Brady Moreland. She squinted at the headlights, smiling when she recognized Nix’s truck.

“Good timing,” she said. “The van will be out of your way in just a minute.”

“Actually, I’m staying here tonight after all,” Dana told her as she slid out of the cab of the truck. “I ran by to see Doyle and told him I’d keep an eye on the place.”

“Oh.” Laney looked surprised. “Okay. I need to run home and get some notes for a court case that starts Monday, but I can be back here in a half hour—”

“You don’t have to stay with me,” Dana said quickly. “Doyle told me you’d probably try but to remind you your big case is important and I’m a deputy U.S. marshal with a big gun.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. Go get some rest so you can kick butt in court Monday.”

After Laney’s taillights disappeared around the bend, Dana turned to look at Nix. “I do appreciate the offer to stay, but—”

“But you’re a deputy U.S. marshal with a big gun?”

She patted her purse. “Glock 17.”

“Nice.” He bent a little closer to her, lowering his voice. “I have a sweet Colt 1911 .45 caliber with a rosewood grip, and if you quit trying to get rid of me, I might let you hold it.”

A dangerous look glittered in her eyes. “You’re trying to tempt me with an offer to handle your weapon?”

He nearly swallowed his tongue.

She smiled the smile of a woman who knew she’d scored a direct hit. “You can stay,” she said almost regally. “We’ll negotiate weapon-handling terms later.”

She headed up the porch steps and entered her brother’s house, leaving Nix to wonder just what he’d gotten himself into.

* * *

DANA GAVE NIX the guest room, taking her brother’s bedroom for herself. As she was trying to figure out what part of the chaos to tackle first, Nix knocked on the door frame. He paused in the doorway, eyeing the mess with a grimace. “Let me help you straighten up.”

“It’s okay. I can get it.”

“You should take a shower and clean the blood out of your hair,” he said firmly. “Go ahead. I’ll see how far I can get by the time you’re done.”

She was too tired and sore to argue. The bruises on her shoulders were beginning to ache, and the blood in her hair was giving off an unpleasant metallic odor she would be happy to get rid of. She took her whole suitcase into the bathroom down the hall, pleased to see that the room conformed to tourist mountain cabin standards by being roomy and, even better, boasting a whirlpool tub with a multisetting handheld showerhead.

She tried to hurry through her bath, but the soothing pulse of the showerhead’s massage setting against her bruised shoulders was seductive, keeping her in the tub longer than she’d intended. She forced herself out of the hot spray finally, gritting her teeth against the faint chill of the bathroom on her wet skin, and hurried through drying off and dressing.

But by the time she reached Doyle’s bedroom, Nix had finished most of the cleanup, changing the bedsheets and returning most of the clothes back to their drawers. “There were a few things smudged with fingerprint powder,” he told her as he wiped down the dresser surface with a damp rag. “I put those and the sheets in the clothes basket in the laundry room.”

“Where’s the laundry room?” she asked, tugging her robe more tightly around her as Nix’s dark-eyed gaze dropped to where the robe lapels gaped open to reveal her thin nightgown.

His gaze snapped back up to meet hers. “Just off the kitchen.”

“Ah.”

“Was the water hot enough?”

She nodded. “Bathroom’s amazing. What is this place, one of those tourist cabins?”

“Actually, I think it may be,” Nix answered, giving the chest of drawers a final swipe of the dust rag. “Back about ten years ago, some guy bought up a lot of this land and built a bunch of cabins, hoping to bring more tourism to this area. But it’s just too far off the beaten path, and Bitterwood doesn’t have enough attractions to compete with places like Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge or Bryson City. So the guy had to sell off a bunch of these cabins for a song just to keep his real-estate business from going belly-up. Doyle probably got a decent deal on the place. Is he buying or renting, do you know?”

“Buying,” she answered. “He said it wouldn’t look good for the chief of police to rent a place. Might make it seem like he wasn’t planning to stick around for the long haul. Bad optics.”

Nix’s grimace suggested he wasn’t a fan of that sort of public-service politics. Dana didn’t like it much herself, though being a federal law enforcement agent meant that some level of politics was unavoidable.

“Thanks for cleaning up,” she added, waving her hand toward the much neater room.

“Not a problem.”

As Nix took a step toward the bedroom door, Dana caught his arm, stilling his movement. He looked down at her hand, then slowly lifted his gaze back to her face. Heat radiated from his tall, broad-shouldered body, washing over her in a flood that set her own skin tingling.

“Yes?” His voice was like silk over sandpaper.

“You know something about my mother, don’t you?”

Nix recoiled slightly, the movement clearly involuntary. Dana stared at him, watched the color suffuse his face as his gaze slid.

Her pulse notched upward, fueled by a river of dread flowing through her veins to settle in the center of her chest. She took her own step backward, until her knees hit the edge of Doyle’s bed and she sat abruptly, curling her fingers into the bedspread.

“What did my mother do?” she asked, her voice tight with alarm.

Nix made himself look at her, his dark gaze unfathomable. “If the story I’ve heard all my life is true, she killed her own baby and tried to steal someone else’s.”

Chapter Four

Dana’s face went pale with shock at Nix’s words. She stared at him, first in stunned silence, then in a slowly simmering anger that chased the pallor from her face, replacing it with splotches of high color in her cheeks.

“That’s ludicrous.”

He didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t actually vouch for any of the details. All he knew was what the older people in his small community had whispered for years, quietly enough that they could pretend discretion while knowing full well that their children were listening and absorbing the cautionary tale of the teenage girl who got herself pregnant, got away with murder and eventually got herself run out of town for her sins.

“My mother was a wonderful, kind, smart and decent woman.”

“I’m sure she was,” Nix agreed, though not with enough conviction to drive the fury from Dana’s flashing eyes.

“You couldn’t possibly know anything about her. She left here before you were born.”

“Yeah, about a year before I was born,” he agreed.

She looked away from him, as if she couldn’t stand looking at him any longer. He took that as his cue to leave, backing toward the door.

“Wait,” she snapped.

He faltered to a stop.

She looked at him again, her expression more composed, though distress roiled behind her eyes. “Please sit.” She waved her hand toward the armchair by the window, next to a table holding a reading lamp and a small stack of books.

He sat in the chief’s chair and took a bracing breath before he looked at Dana again, steeling himself against her anger and pain. But she seemed to have herself completely under control now, her expression back to cool neutral, her eyes mirrors reflecting her surroundings without revealing anything that lay beneath.

“Where did you hear that story about my mother?” she asked.

She wasn’t going to let it go, he saw. Not that he should have expected her to. After all, she hadn’t chosen a career in law enforcement because she was incurious or prone to dodging conflict.

“It’s one of those stories you grow up hearing,” he answered carefully.

“Like monsters in the closet and bogeymen under the bed?” she asked, only a hint of sarcasm breaking the calm surface of her composure.

“Yes,” he admitted. “Like that.”

“So, tell me. What was the story? How did she kill her child?”

“Her baby,” he corrected. He thought he saw a quick flinch, a slight tightening in the corners of her eyes. “She was unmarried. Pregnant. Went into labor and someone took her to the hospital in Maryville for delivery. Everything went okay and the baby was born.” He faltered to a stop, knowing the worst part of the story, the part that made any normal person recoil, was yet to come.

“Did she kill the baby at the hospital or at home?” Dana asked, her tone businesslike, as if she were interviewing a witness to a crime.

“At the hospital. The nurse had brought him for feeding and left him there with her. As the story goes, she claims she fell asleep and someone switched out her live baby for an already dead one. But nobody saw anything.”

“Nobody saw anyone carrying a dead baby into the room or carrying a live one out, you mean.”

“Right.” Nix shook his head. “Dana, I don’t know that any of this is true. It’s just a story.”

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “Maybe not. What happened when the unmarried girl discovered the baby in the bassinet was dead?”

“She started screaming.” He swallowed a lump that had formed in his throat as he watched Dana’s face grow even stonier. “She kept screaming at the nurses that it wasn’t her baby, but of course, it had to be. Nobody had gone into her room.”

“That anyone witnessed.”

He’d let his gaze drift away from her face but snapped it back at her words. “That anyone witnessed.”

“What’s the next part of this cautionary tale?” Her voice held a minute trace of sarcasm, so tiny he wasn’t sure whether it was really there or he was just reading that tone into her words.

“The hospital called in a psychiatrist to calm her down. She finally settled down and started to cooperate with the hospital staff, who were trying to make arrangements for the baby’s burial. The nurse who saw her just before all hell broke loose supposedly swore she seemed to be sad but acting normally enough for a girl who’d just lost her newborn baby.”

Dana was silent and very still for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was faint and strained. “And then?”

“The nurses supposedly heard screams coming from a room down the hall on the same floor. A woman screaming that someone had stolen her baby. The story goes, they locked down the hospital and finally found the unmarried girl and the missing baby in the hospital basement. She was trying to take him out a service exit.”

“Who were the baby’s parents?”

“You mean the baby that lived?”

She nodded.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “That was never part of the story I heard.”

“They only identified the girl?”

He nodded. “Crazy Tallie Cumberland, mad as a hare and wicked as the rest of her family. Killed her own baby and tried to steal another. Better take care and not let a Cumberland look you in the eye, or you’ll turn out crazy and wicked, too.”

“Lovely.”

“I’m sorry. I guess it’s not so entertaining a legend when you’re on the Cumberland end of things.”

“It’s also completely impossible,” Dana said in a low, flat tone. “My mother couldn’t have killed her own child under any circumstances. She was perfectly sane, perfectly rational and as loving and protective a mother as a child could have hoped for.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Nix said.

“No, you’re not.” She pulled the collar of her robe more tightly around herself. “You never knew her.”

“No, I didn’t.” Nix stood. “It’s late. We’re tired. Let’s just get some sleep tonight while we can. Morning will make everything look better.”

At least, he hoped it would.

But long after he retreated to the guest room, he remained awake, staring at the moon-painted ceiling over the bed and wondering just how much of the story he’d told Dana was true.

And how much of it, true or otherwise, had led to Doyle Massey’s brand-new brakes failing on the curve just past Purgatory Bridge?

* * *

LOSING HER PARENTS had been one of the most devastating moments of Dana Massey’s life. She’d talked to her mother on the phone only a couple of hours before the accident, planning for a birthday party for David, the baby of the family, which was to have taken place the next month. David was turning eighteen, a significant milestone, and Tallie Massey had tasked Dana with finding a particular set of books David wanted for his birthday. They were obscure books on South American agricultural technology, in the original Spanish, and neither of her parents had a clue where to start looking.

Dana had been a junior in college, entirely too full of herself and far too certain she knew everything there was to know about any subject of importance.

Stupid, stupid girl.

The call had come in the middle of the night. It had been David, the baby, the one who felt everything like a pierce to the heart, trying so hard to be strong and adult, to break the news to her gently.

But there was no easy way to tell someone her parents were dead.

Doyle had beaten her home by an hour. She’d found him and David sitting in silence in the well-worn den of their family home, staring at the phone as if waiting for more bad news to crash down on them. They’d looked up in unison as she entered the room, just staring at her with shattered expressions and heartsick eyes. She’d opened her arms and David had run to her, a lost little boy in a young man’s body.

“Sheriff Morgan delivered the news himself,” Doyle had told Dana later, after they’d coaxed David into getting some sleep before morning came and the food-and-sympathy visits started. “David said he’d offered to stick around, but our little brother didn’t want us to think he was still a kid.”

Oh, David, Dana thought, staring at the ceiling of her brother’s bedroom. What kind of man would you have been?

Morning light was beginning to seep through the curtains, just a hint of pearly-gray in the otherwise unrelenting darkness, but it gave her an excuse to get out of bed and get her mind out of the bleak past for a while.

There was a light on in the kitchen, the sound of water running. Figuring an intruder wouldn’t stop for a drink of water, she decided against going back into the bedroom for her Glock and entered the kitchen to find Walker Nix scooping coffee grounds into a filter. He turned at the sound of her bare footsteps on the hardwood floor. “Did I wake you?”

“No.” She stifled a yawn and settled on one of the stools in front of the breakfast bar. “You’re up early.”

“I have to go home and get ready for work.”

“Right.”

He looked at her over his shoulder, his dark eyes hooded. “You want some coffee?”

She nodded. “Nice and strong, I hope?”

“Of course.” His lips twitched as he reached into the cabinet over the coffeemaker and pulled out a couple of large mugs. “Did you get any sleep?”

She grimaced. “That obvious, huh?”

“You look fine.” He actually sounded as if he believed what he was saying.

“You’re a better diplomat than you look,” she murmured with a smile.

He left the coffee percolating and pulled up the stool beside hers, resting one arm on the bar and turning to face her. “I want you to forget what I told you last night about your mother. I have no proof that any of it happened, and what passes as truth, in these hills, can be as flexible as taffy.”

“I know it didn’t happen the way you heard it,” she said with confidence. “But something happened to my mother when she was living here in Bitterwood. There’s no other reason why she would’ve hidden her past so thoroughly from us for all these years.”

“You didn’t even know she was from here?”

“I knew she was from the Smoky Mountains. That she was born in Tennessee and didn’t meet my father until she was nearly twenty and working at a bait shop in Terrebonne. She told us she didn’t have any family left, and no reason to go back to Tennessee for visits. That’s why we were sort of surprised when she and my dad decided to drive to Tennessee for their vacation.”

“Do you think your father knew about your mother’s past?”

She thought about the question for a moment. “I think so. They were best friends as well as spouses. They didn’t keep secrets from each other.”

“But they never told you or your brother anything about it?”

“No.” She hadn’t thought much about why her mother’s past was a blank. It had simply always been that way, for as long as she remembered. “I think Dad guarded her secret because that’s what she wanted. But he must have known.”

“She didn’t leave you anything, a written journal or something that might have explained the blanks in her past?”

“No. Nothing. She wasn’t expecting to die, so she hadn’t prepared.”

“My mother got real sick when I was sixteen,” Nix said after a moment of silence. “Breast cancer. She just wanted to live at least long enough to get me and my brother out of high school.” Nix’s smile was tinged with a hint of exasperation. “Lavelle had to be pushed through that final semester, kicking and screaming.”

“Younger brothers,” Dana murmured, biting back the urge to cry.

“The good news is, she beat the cancer. Twenty-year survivor as of January.”

She felt a flutter of relief. “That’s wonderful.”

He nodded. “The chief says you’re the oldest.”

“He likes to remind people of that a lot. Lucky me.”

“If it makes you feel any better, you look younger.”

“Ten years ago, I might have smacked you for saying that,” she said with a grin. “But now I’ll just say ‘thanks.’ And suggest you might want to get your eyes checked.”

He looked at her for a long moment, his scrutiny straightforward and a little unnerving. “You have to know you’re a very attractive woman.”