Falsely Accused

It had taken a while, but eventually he had proven that he was more than a product of his mother’s mistakes. His job as a police officer in Boston had helped solidify the town’s impression of him as hardworking and honest. When he had returned for his high school carpentry teacher’s retirement party and had been given an opportunity to take over his restoration business, he had jumped at the opportunity. He had worked with his teacher for two years before stepping in as owner and operator. The town had seemed happy enough with the transition, but Wren had left town to go to college, and she had only returned for brief visits. Unlike Titus, she was still considered an outsider. The fact that she was an FBI agent might make people more willing to trust her, but whether or not she’d have any allies in a town that was close-knit and tight-lipped when it wanted to be remained to be seen. She did have Abigail, though, and Abigail had a lot of influence in Hidden Cove. She’d been born and raised there. She’d taught elementary and middle school. She’d fostered kids who’d had nowhere else to go. Never married, she’d devoted her life to helping others and supporting the town she loved.

The town loved her for it.

Although he hadn’t been to see her at the farm since his return, they’d spoken at church and at town meetings. She’d supported his efforts to save some of the oldest homes in town, and he’d appreciated that. She’d broken her hip a month ago, and, according to people who supposedly knew, she planned to move into a retirement home once she finished rehab.

The fact that she was giving up the property that had been in her family for three generation made his stomach churn, but it wasn’t his business, and when he’d heard that the for-sale sign had finally gone up, he’d kept his mouth shut and his opinions to himself.

Abigail would be devastated when she heard the news about Ryan. She’d loved him like a son. Her two last foster children had been her two best. That’s what she’d often said when he was visiting Wren at the farm during their high school years.

He glanced in his rearview mirror as he pulled onto Mountain Road. It had been too long since he’d been out to Abigail’s property. He should have visited before she’d broken her hip, but he’d been avoiding the memories he knew it would stir up.

He’d made a lot of mistakes in his life.

Accusing Wren of lying about his ex-wife? That had been one of the biggest. He’d known her almost as well as he knew himself. He’d known how honest she was, how much she cared about him, how deeply it had hurt her to have to tell him she had seen Meghan with another man.

Yet, he’d been more willing to believe she was lying than he had been to accept the truth.

He’d tried to apologize, but by that point it had been too late. The damage had been done.

“Water under the bridge,” he muttered, accelerating as he headed toward town. The sun had just risen, golden rays of light tipping the tree canopy with gold. The sky was pristine blue. No clouds, but he caught a whiff of something in the air.

Smoke?

He rolled down the window, inhaled fresh cool air and the unmistakable scent of a fire. He glanced in his rearview mirror, saw black smoke billowing up from the valley.

Surprised, he turned the truck around and sped toward the plume of smoke. It was too big to be coming from a trash pile. Was someone’s house burning? He called 911 but, without an address, could only be vague about the location. The road wound its way down into the valley, the forests opening into farmland. He drove several miles, his attention on the road and the smoke wafting across the sky. It took him too long to realize where it was coming from, and by the time he did, he was almost at the gates that opened onto Abigail’s two-hundred-acre property. The old farmhouse stood on a hill in the center of a lush green lawn. Gray siding. White shutters. Wraparound porch.

The smoke was coming from behind the house.

Or from the back of it.

He drove through the open gates, speeding up the gravel driveway and giving the address to the 911 operator as he parked. If he didn’t do something, the two-hundred-year-old farmhouse would be consumed by flames before help arrived.

He raced to the backyard, hoping an outbuilding or trash pile was on fire. Flames shot from the roof of the kitchen addition that had been added in the fifties. Abigail loved to tell the story of how her father had surprised her mother with the extraordinary gift of a modern kitchen. In the years since, nothing had been changed. The subway-tile backsplash, the Formica counters and glossy pink cupboards were all exactly as they had been. The oven, the refrigerator, the old icebox. They stood exactly where Abigail’s father had placed them.

He bounded up the porch stairs. The back door was open, the room beyond filled with smoke. He could see flames lapping at the floor and moving toward the dining room, which was part of the older building.

All the aged and dry wood would be kindling for the inferno. He grabbed the garden hose that Abigail used to water the flower beds and turned on the water.

It wasn’t much, but if he could wet down the wood, he might be able to slow the fire. He aimed for the interior of the kitchen, listening as the fire hissed and steamed, moving into the room as the flames diminished.

There was a trail of liquid on the floor, and the flames followed it, shooting along through the pool of what had to be accelerant.

He aimed at that, spraying water across the floor and into the dining room, skirting past smoldering floorboards and making his way deeper into the house.

He could smell it now—gasoline.

And he could see it, splattered on walls and on the floor, just waiting for the spark to get it going.

Someone had been trying to burn down the farmhouse.

Who?

Why?

And what did it have to do with Ryan’s death?

Titus didn’t believe in coincidences, and he didn’t believe the two things weren’t connected.

He sprayed the floorboards, stretching the hose as far as it could go. Once he’d reached its limits, he headed back into the kitchen. The flames were out there, smothered by the deluge of water, but the damage was massive. He doubted the addition could be saved, but the fire marshal would make that determination.

He caught movement in his periphery vision and turned as a figure lunged from the doorway that led to the back stairs. Something glanced off his head, the pain less immediate than his need to stop his attacker from escaping.

He dropped the hose and tackled what looked like a scrawny teenager. They fell into a puddle of gasoline-tainted water. Titus had the kid pinned, his forearm to the boy’s throat.

“Let me go!” the kid whined.

“Not until the police arrive.”

“Police? I was trying to put the fire out!”

“You can tell them all about it,” Titus said.

The kid’s gaze shifted. Just a little. Just enough that Titus had a millisecond of warning. He dove to the side as something whipped through the air. It hit his shoulder, the impact stealing the breath from his lungs.

Not a bullet. He rolled sideways, pulling his gun, aiming at a man who was swinging a baseball bat in the direction of his head. The shot hit its mark, but momentum kept the bat spinning through the air. It hit Titus in the temple.

He saw stars.

Then he saw nothing at all.

THREE

Black smoke rose from the back of Abigail’s farmhouse, the dark streaks of soot-filled heat drifting into the sky. No flames that Wren could see, but that didn’t make the situation better. Something was burning. The house or the porch behind it. Not an outbuilding. The smoke was too close.

“What in the world?” Annalise Rivers muttered as she pulled up in front of the house. One of the FBI’s top-notch defense attorneys, Annalise had arrived at the hospital two hours after Wren had called the field office and requested help. She’d brought Special Agent Radley Tumberg with her. A member of the Special Crimes Unit, Radley had been part of Wren’s work world for years. Determined and tough, he knew how to go after the answers he needed to solve some of the most complicated crimes.

Any other time Wren would have found comfort in having him there. Right now, all she felt was confusion, grief and anger.

“Call the fire department!” she shouted as she jumped out of the vehicle, the soft cast the hospital had set her wrist in banging against her chest as the sling bounced with her movement. She’d had the bullet wound cleaned and stitched and the bone set. Until the stitches came out, her arm would remain in the soft cast. She had been released from the hospital with instructions to keep the arm elevated and to rest.

She had planned to go to the rehab center, explain to Abigail what had happened and then return to the farmhouse. Instead, she’d received a call from a nurse at the rehab center. The sheriff had broken the news of Ryan’s death, and Abigail was distraught, begging someone to bring her the photo album that contained pictures of Ryan when he was young.

Wren had been enraged at the sheriff’s callousness. She knew he had intended to arrest her. Only Annalise’s law enforcement savvy had kept that from happening. Wren’s hands had been swabbed for gunpowder residue. When it wasn’t found, she’d been told she was free to go.

For now.

If her arm hadn’t been broken, she’d have been at the rehab center before the sheriff. Instead, she’d headed to the farmhouse to get the photo album.

The farmhouse that seemed to be on fire.

She shouted for Annalise to stay back and raced to the side of the house, feet pounding the packed earth and soft grass. She’d planned to pull up the shrubs that were edging too close to the siding this week. The Realtor Abigail had hired had suggested it.

Now her only concern was keeping the old house from burning to the ground.

“Wren!” Radley yelled, grabbing her good arm and dragging her backward. “Go back to the car. I’ll handle this.”

“In what world would that ever happen?” she replied, her voice tauter and sharper than she’d intended.

“In my perfect world,” he muttered, letting go of her arm and running around the back of the house with her.

He knew she wouldn’t back down, and he wasn’t going to waste time trying to convince her to. That was one of Radley’s strengths. He knew how to take charge and how to concede leadership to someone else if necessary.

“In my perfect world, there wouldn’t be smoke billowing out from the back of my foster mother’s house,” she replied, sprinting up the porch stairs.

The back door was cracked open, the threshold singed black.

She slammed her good hand against the door, and it flew open, banging into the wall behind it. If Abigail had been there, she’d have chastised Wren. She wasn’t, and neither was Ryan. The closest thing to a kid brother she’d ever had, he’d been living with Abigail after divorcing his wife of five years. Darla had moved to Boston after the divorce was final, and Ryan hadn’t been able to afford the house they’d bought together. The property had gone into foreclosure.

Wren knew that had been a blow to his ego.

He’d prided himself on doing better than his biological family had, of making his way in a world that wasn’t always fair or equitable. He’d been almost too prideful about his accomplishments, something she’d never had the heart to tell him. He was Ryan—bighearted and bigheaded.

Now he was gone.

She crossed the threshold, barreling into the kitchen.

A room that had always been Abigail’s favorite, it had once had fifties vintage charm that permeated all Wren’s best memories. Now it was a disaster, water flooding the floor, smoke billowing up from curtains that were smoldering.

“You have a sprinkler system here?” Radley asked, stepping into the kitchen behind her, his gaze darting from one corner of the room to the other. She knew he wasn’t looking for a sprinkler system. He was looking for danger.

“No,” she responded, toeing an old green garden hose that was snaking through the kitchen and into the dining room. “Someone turned on the garden hose.”

“To put out the fire?”

“I can’t think of any other reason.” She inhaled, the harsh scent of smoke stinging her nose. “I think I smell gasoline.”

“I was thinking the same. Someone set the fire, and then tried to put it out?” Radley grabbed the hose and tugged it back into the room, turning the nozzle to shut off the water that had still been flowing out of it.

“That wouldn’t make any sense.”

“Does any of this?” he asked, following her as she moved cautiously into the dining room.

Unlike the kitchen, it had no deep char marks on the walls. She was so busy noting the condition of the room that she almost didn’t see the man splayed out on the sopping area rug near the table. His face was turned away, his hair wet, his clothes soaked. Her heart jumped.

“Titus?” she murmured, rushing to his side, every thought of the hose, the water and the fire gone. Even now, even after so many years apart, she would have known him anywhere.

Seeing him like this—unconscious and vulnerable—tore at her heart.

She touched his neck, feeling for a pulse and praying she would find one. She’d already lost Ryan. She didn’t want to lose Titus, too.

His eyes flew open. Not green or blue. A shade of teal that reminded her of the sky at dusk.

“Wren?” He snagged her hand.

“What happened?” she replied. “Are you okay?”

“I think so.”

“Is this our perp?” Radley asked, his hand hovering near the holster that was nearly hidden by his suit jacket.

“This is Titus. A friend of mine,” she responded.

“That doesn’t mean he’s not the perp,” Radley pointed out reasonably.

“I’m not,” Titus bit out, his eyes blazing. “Your perps are gone.” He got to his feet, Wren’s hand still in his.

She could have pulled away.

She probably should have.

Their friendship had ended years ago.

She hadn’t seen or heard from him since the day she’d told him she’d seen his wife with another man. She had thought she was being true to their friendship, honoring the honest and caring relationship they had.

He hadn’t taken it that way.

He’d called her jealous and petty, and had accused her of lying.

And she had stepped out of his life.

Just like that.

The hurt had felt like the worst kind of betrayal. That he hadn’t known her well enough to have discovered the truth about who she was and what she was capable of had nearly broken her heart.

She’d survived by walking away and cutting herself off from him the same way she cut herself off from anyone who didn’t respect her boundaries. She had learned plenty of hard lessons watching her mother, and she had vowed to never repeat the mistakes she’d witnessed. She wanted mutual kindness in her friendships, mutual care and respect and affection in all the relationships in her life.

Titus had once ticked all those boxes.

And, then, he hadn’t.

They were strangers now, and she had no business holding on to him as if they were more. But he looked unsteady, and she told herself she was offering him support he obviously needed. The truth was more complicated. It was about friendship and loyalty and years when they had been each other’s staunchest supporters. It was about time passing, about all the days and nights when she shouldn’t have been missing him but had.

It was about that same heart-jolting feeling she had always gotten when she’d stared into his eyes. It was about the kind of love that didn’t stop because of hurt feelings and broken trusts. Not romantic love. Real and deep and abiding friendship.

“Perps? As in more than one?” Radley asked, inhaling deeply. “I smell gasoline in here, too.”

“Because two men were trying to burn the place down,” Titus said. “I walked in on them before they could get the blaze going enough.”

“Did you see them?” Wren asked, pulling her hand from his because she needed to—she was a professional, and he was the possible victim of a crime.

“Yes. One looked like a kid. Maybe late teens, early twenties. Skinny. The other was older. Heavier. I didn’t get a good look at him. I was too busy dodging the baseball bat he was swinging at my head.” He touched the back of his skull, pulling his hand away and looking at it as if he expected to see blood on his fingers.

“I take it you weren’t successful?” Wren probed the area he’d just touched and found an egg-sized lump. No broken skin. No blood. That didn’t mean it wasn’t a serious injury.

He winced away. “How’d you guess?”

“That huge bump on your head clued me in,” she replied. “Can you call an ambulance, Radley?”

“Sure.”

“That’s not necessary,” Titus cut in.

“You could have a fractured skull. Or a concussion.”

“I’m not seeing two of everything. I don’t feel sick. I’m not disoriented. I have a headache to beat all headaches, but I think I’ll be just fine. What we need are the police.”

“Based on the number of sirens I hear, I’d say they’re on the way,” Radley said.

Wren could hear the sirens, too, their warning muted by walls and glass. Once the police arrived, she might not have a chance to retrieve the photo album. The sheriff’s department was small and had limited resources. It could be days before the house was processed and cleared.

She didn’t want to wait days.

Not when Abigail was so upset.

“I’m running upstairs for something. Meet me out front.” She tossed the word over her shoulder as she sprinted into the wide hallway that led to the front staircase. Functional rather than ornate, it had thick newel posts and dark wooden stair treads. None of it seemed to have been touched by the fire.

“Wren!” Radley called, rushing after her. “You know better. This is a crime scene.”

“And my prints are already all over it,” she replied, jogging up the stairs, her wrist throbbing dully with each movement.

“It’s not about your prints. It’s about contaminating evidence and disturbing the scene.”

“From what I can see, the perps didn’t go upstairs.” She hit the landing at a near run. She couldn’t bring Ryan back for Abigail, but she could at least do this.

“You may not be seeing everything.”

“She’s seeing enough. No gasoline trail up here. No burned carpet. No sign that they were trying to set it on fire.” Titus cut in, following right on Radley’s heels.

“That doesn’t mean they weren’t here,” Radley reiterated.

“No, but I’m fairly certain the sheriff’s office isn’t going to have their investigation ruined by an FBI agent walking through the house she spent half her childhood in.” Titus reached the landing and bounded up the stairs after Wren.

She could have joined the conversation, reminded them that she could handle herself and the situation. Under normal circumstances, she would have. These were not normal circumstances. Ryan’s murder had pulled the rug out from under her, and she was still trying to regain her footing.

She walked into Abigail’s room, trying not to notice the layer of dust on the once-immaculate dresser. She’d known that Abigail was getting older. She’d seen small changes in her at every visit. Less energy and verve. Less concern for keeping the house as spotless as it had once been. Overgrown lawn and weed-choked flower beds. Wren had told herself Abigail was busy with her church friends, her clubs and her volunteer work.

She had worried that it wasn’t true.

But she hadn’t visited more. She hadn’t extended her stays. She hadn’t asked Abigail flat out if she was able to handle the farm on her own.

She should have.

Just like she should have kept her mouth shut about Titus’s wife. It was too late now. She couldn’t change the past, but she could make certain that Abigail’s future was secure, and that she had everything she wanted and needed.

She opened the closet, expecting to have to search the shelves for the album Abigail wanted. To her surprise, it was sitting on the floor near Abigail’s shoes, Ryan’s school pictures filling little oval slots on the cover. She tucked it under her arm and turned to leave the room, nearly bumping into Titus.

Surprised, she stumbled back.

“Careful,” he said, grabbing her arm to steady her.

“I’m fine.” She shrugged away, determined to keep distance between them. She didn’t want to fall back into the trap of caring. She didn’t want to be hurt like she’d been before.

“Is that the album?” Radley asked.

“Yes.”

“Album?” Titus eyed the thick book.

“Abigail heard about Ryan’s death. She wanted me to bring this to her.”

“Heard about it?”

“The sheriff broke the news to her.”

“He couldn’t have waited for you to do it?”

“Considering I’m his prime suspect, I’d say he probably wanted to ask questions about our relationship.”

“You and Ryan got along well most of the time.”

“We did, but he was encouraging Abigail to sell the farm. I wasn’t as excited about it.”

“That doesn’t make you a killer,” Radley intoned.

“No, but it could be motive.” It’s certainly a motive she’d be considering if she were the investigating officer.

The first responders had arrived, firefighters banging on the front door asking if anyone was inside. She ran to open it, bracing herself for the chaos she knew was coming.

Wren hadn’t been exaggerating when she had said that she was the prime suspect in Ryan’s murder. Once the sheriff had arrived, he’d questioned Titus, put out a BOLO for the perps and then begun questioning Wren. He didn’t come out and accuse her of setting fire to the house to cover up evidence, but he hinted that it might be a possibility. Titus listened silently, leaning against the mailbox at the end of the driveway as Sheriff Camden Wilson volleyed one question after another in Wren’s direction.

“Sheriff, my client has already answered these questions,” the FBI lawyer Wren had introduced Titus to cut in. She’d exited a black SUV as soon as the sheriff had arrived, her blond hair and fair skin contrasting sharply with her black suit. He should remember her name, but his mind was still foggy from the hit he’d taken.

“Not to my satisfaction.”

“You have three witnesses who can all testify that Agent Santino was not here at the time the fire began—”

“She could have hired someone.”

“Before or after you questioned her? During or after her wrist was set? At what point do you think she had access to a phone and the ability to make a call without being noticed.” She crossed lean arms over her waist and eyed the sheriff dispassionately. She looked to be in her late thirties or early forties, fine lines near the corners of her eyes and a few strands of white mixed with her dark blond hair. She wore minimal makeup, a conservative suit and a half smile that Titus knew was getting under the sheriff’s skin.

“What I’m saying is that she could easily have set all this up ahead of time.” He glanced toward the house, frowning as he spotted the fire marshal moving toward them. “We can take up the conversation later. I need to speak with the fire marshal.”

“I’m assuming my client is free to go?” the lawyer said.

“For now. Are you planning to leave the scene, Titus?” he asked. They knew each other from church but didn’t run in the same circles. On a first-name basis but not friends.

“Yes.” He hadn’t put any thought to it. He’d been too busy trying to figure out why the sheriff would think Wren had murdered her foster brother. Now he was certain he wasn’t sticking around. Not if Wren was leaving.

Whatever was going on, it wasn’t good, and she seemed to be right at the center of it.