Secrets in a Small Town Read online

  Gretchen cocked her head and offered a saccharine sweet smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know? Fortunately, it’s really none of your business.”

  “Touché.”

  Owen spared Piper a short look that said cut it out and nodded to Gretchen, ready to separate the two women before they really unsheathed their claws and someone ended up a casualty. “That’s fine. Is there anything else you need?” At the shake of her head, he nudged Piper from the room and grabbed the door to close it behind him as he informed Gretchen he’d be a while. “Get some rest,” he instructed her, and closed the door but not before catching a glimpse of pique on Gretchen’s face.

  “I didn’t realize you were running a halfway house,” Piper said, walking in front of him so that he had a nice view of her backside as it twitched enticingly beneath the flirty peach skirt. He made it a point to avert his gaze before his mind took another unscheduled detour.

  “I would say there’s probably a lot you don’t know about me,” he said.

  “Not for long,” she said in a husky murmur that fired his blood.

  “We’ll see,” he said. She turned as if to return to the kitchen but he didn’t want to be indoors. He gestured to the door. “Follow me.”

  PIPER HESITATED. ONCE AGAIN, she wasn’t exactly dressed for an excursion into the wild. He saw her reluctance and cracked a grin that she felt down to her manicured toes, which were peeking out from her wedged, open-toed sandals. Oh, that was dangerous. She smoothed her hair and followed, hoping she didn’t end up falling on her face.

  “And where are we going?” she asked, closing the door behind her. “I think this qualifies as a reneging on our deal,” she said, chasing after him.

  “Don’t worry, we’re not going far,” he promised her, actually offering his hand to steady her on the uneven terrain. She accepted his help, secretly delighting in the rough, hard skin scraping against the delicate softness of her hands. She wondered what it would feel like to have those masculine hands touching other parts of her body. She suppressed a shiver but he caught the subtle motion in the tremble of her hand and he stopped. “Are you all right?” he asked, concerned. “If you really don’t want to be outside, we can go back in the house. I just didn’t want our conversation overheard… It’s personal, you know?”

  Yes. She got that. A spark of heat trailed the realization that he was going to share those personal things with her, not Gretchen. Yeah, because first you blackmailed him and then you enticed him with the possibility of clearing his father’s name, not because you’re having a tender moment, a snarky voice reminded her. Stay focused. She pulled her hand from his grasp. “Outside is fine. Where are we going?” He pointed toward a copse of trees near a creek that poured into a deep watering hole framed by granite boulders. “Wow, not bad,” she breathed in surprised. “You can’t even see this from the road.”

  “I know,” he said, grinning. “It was the main selling point of the property. Reminds me of being a kid in West Virginia. My brothers and I used to hit the swimming holes regularly in the summer. We played hours of Drown the Rat. It was our favorite game.”

  “I’m not much of a swimmer,” she admitted, though that water looked nice. “But I’d love to put my feet in.” She shucked her shoes and settled on the bank to slip her toes into the freezing water. She immediately removed them. “That’s so cold,” she announced unnecessarily, catching a grin from Owen. “You could’ve warned me that the water is like ice,” she grumbled, and he shrugged in response. Oh, she was beginning to like that grin far too much. The way his lips tipped at the corners should be a crime. Tucking her feet under her, she opened her pad and readied her pen. “Whenever you’re ready, Mr. Garrett,” she said, indicating it was time to get serious, which a small part of her, she could admit, was lamenting. She rather liked the idea of spending a lazy day here with Owen by the creek. Her imagination was doing a fair job of presenting all kinds of unprofessional pursuits and she needed to nip that kind of thinking in the bud. She hadn’t come so far only to get derailed by her own hormones. However, if she were of a mind to throw away all her hard work and single-minded focus on a wild night of debauchery, she could see herself making a beeline for Owen Garrett. He was, in a word, hot stuff.

  OWEN SETTLED BESIDE PIPER in the cool shade of a towering redwood but didn’t know where to start. For one, he was distracted by the subtle scent of Piper’s hair as the light breeze lifted the dark brown strands, making it the first time he’d ever seen her hair less than perfect. It stirred his imagination to see what a bed-tousled Piper looked like. Just the thought sent his mind racing and awakened his, uh, other parts. “So what do you want to know?” he asked, irritably.

  “No need to be snippy. You agreed to do this,” she reminded him.

  “Sorry. Talking about this stuff puts me on edge. It’s not exactly good times we’re dredging up here,” he said, and understanding dawned in her eyes. Soft, cocoa-brown eyes, he noted, doing a small double take. He looked away. “Ask your questions. I’ll do my best to answer, but you have to promise me something…” He paused, and she waited expectantly. He figured it was a good sign that she hadn’t immediately balked at his request. “If you find something that pertains to my father in your research, you’ll let me know.”

  She smiled, the picture of perfection and beguiling sweetness. He had the distinct impression it was a well-rehearsed act, as she said, “Of course, Owen. Let’s start from the beginning. What do you remember about the day your father died?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  OWEN CLOSED HIS EYES, not sure he was ready to relive that day. He’d spent a lifetime trying to forget.

  “It was the first week of June, already hotter than hell,” he remembered. “I’d been after my dad to go fishing but he’d been on edge all day. He wouldn’t let me go down to the swimming hole, either. He wanted me close by, within his line of sight, he’d told me. I figured I was in trouble for something, because he’d never been one to act like that so it must’ve been me who’d done something.”

  “Was your father a strict disciplinarian?” Piper asked.

  “Yeah, but he wasn’t stingy with the love. He always kissed me on the forehead before bed and told me he loved me. He used to tell me, ‘if there’s nothing else in this world that’s real, know that I love you.’ It always made me feel special.”

  “That’s sweet,” Piper murmured, pausing in her note taking. “Hard to imagine, given the stories I’ve heard of Ty Garrett my whole life.”

  “Contrary to what people may believe, he wasn’t a monster,” he said. “Before he was Ty Garrett, leader of the Aryan Coalition, he was just my dad and I loved him.”

  “How’d your dad fall into that role as leader?”

  He searched his memory, but came up blank. “I don’t remember.”

  She flipped a few pages in her notebook and read a few lines, “According to my source, Ty Garrett became involved with the Aryan Coalition in 1979, five years before the raid. You would’ve been around six or so,” she supplied, looking up to gauge his reaction.

  “That’s right. We moved around a lot before that,” he recalled. “We settled here and stayed. My dad said there was good opportunity for work with the college campuses so close.” He pulled his pocketknife from his back pocket and wandered to the closest tree to grab a suitable branch to skin. “But that was okay. I liked it here. I didn’t mind.”

  She watched as he worked the branch, skinning the outside layer to reveal the smooth wood underneath. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Whittling. Something my dad taught me. Good stress reliever.”

  “What are you making?”

  “I don’t know yet. Maybe nothing. Depends on what emerges from the wood.” He gestured. “Keep going. I only want to go through this once, so let’s not waste time.”

  “You were telling me about that day…” she said helpfully.

  “Yeah…well, like I said, my dad was edgy all day, like he knew something w
as going to happen and if it did, he wanted me close so we could hightail it out of there.”

  “The raid happened around six o’clock that evening,” she said. “But the information is sketchy in the hour afterward because, as we all know, it did not go down quietly.”

  “No,” he replied darkly. “It did not.” His father hadn’t been the only one killed that day. In all, twelve people were mowed down that day. Some were innocent women and children.

  “My father tried to get everyone out quietly and safely but something went wrong and suddenly bullets started flying. I don’t even know who fired off the first shot but once that happened, the agents raiding the place went crazy until there were bodies and people dying everywhere.”

  “The news said that your father refused to surrender. That he fired the first shot and, in fact, the agent who shot your father claimed self-defense.”

  “That’s not how I remember it,” he said, though the details were hazy. He recalled his father falling, dead in front of him and then as he screamed, he felt someone jerk him off his feet and carry him away. “I saw him gunned down in cold blood but I was a kid, loyal to his father, and who was going to listen to me?”

  A tiny excited smile lit her lips. “I think people will with the right evidence. Are you ready for this? My source said that your father was actually protecting you when he was shot. The agent had his gun trained on you and Ty took the hit instead.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, and I don’t know why an agent would want to shoot a kid, but something feels fishy to me. Like I mentioned before, my source also told me that your dad was actually working with the FBI to bring the Aryan Coalition down. He was working deep cover, so deep that no one ever knew except those in the Bureau who had to know.”

  “Yeah, you said that, but what proof is there? Is your source willing to testify to that fact?” Owen asked, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. His father? Actually one of the good guys? He wanted desperately to believe that but without proof it was useless. “Who said this?” he demanded, his voice trembling from the effort it took not to yell. “If this is true, I need to talk to this person.”

  She made a gesture as if to say calm down and continued, “You know I can’t reveal my source, but I can tell you this, I’ve checked it out and he’s legit. However, he’s risking a lot in coming forward so I can’t reveal who it is.”

  “Piper…” he warned in a low growl. “You’re playing with my life. I need to know.”

  She ignored his request and said, “Back to Red Meadows… The news reports state the FBI had been trying to infiltrate the Aryan Coalition for years in order to break up their sophisticated drug and gun trafficking network. The FBI recovered a cache of drugs and guns that were worth millions. Apparently, a shipment had been ready to go when the raid occurred. Obviously your dad had someone on the inside he was also working with. Do you remember anyone who seemed particularly close to your dad?”

  Unbidden, the image of the pregnant woman rose to the top of his memories and in light of this new information, he wondered if it were relevant. Pressing his lips together, he admitted, “I don’t know of anyone at the compound, but there may have been a woman he was close to…but she’s dead.”

  At that, Piper’s mouth popped open and she sucked a wild breath as she gasped, “T… She called him T… Oh, I should’ve seen it…” At his look of confusion, she dug out a leather journal from the depths of her purse. She held it out to him and he took it, flipping it open as she explained. “I found this in a box that had my old stuff in it at the farm and I think the author of this journal was a young woman named Mimi LaRoche. She was murdered a week before the Red Meadows raid. I think…”

  “She was my dad’s girlfriend,” he supplied in a pained voice, seeing the pregnant belly and how his father had been so gentle and reverent with his touch. He shook his head, still unable to process it. “But she was black…my dad was a racist. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “What if he really wasn’t? It was an act? You know, like my source said, deep cover?”

  “But we were at the compound for five years…”

  “He had to make it convincing. Remember how I said they’d been trying to infiltrate the Aryan Coalition for some time? They couldn’t take any chances. It had to be all or nothing. Your dad fit the bill. No one knew him, he could pull off the cover without any hitches. It had to be real for you so that everyone would buy it. He probably never imagined it would go on for so long but once he was in, he couldn’t get out until it was done.”

  His head reeled with the implications. “There has to be a record of him working with the FBI, some kind of employment record. Where could I find that?”

  Another bright smile followed as she said, “You can’t. But I can. What do you think I’ve been working on? I’ve submitted a FOIA request for the employment record for Ty Garrett. They have twenty working days to comply and it’s likely they’ll drag their feet until the last second.”

  “But if my dad was an agent, wouldn’t I have received some kind of death benefit? Life insurance or something? As far as I know, I was tossed to my aunt with nothing. At least she never said anything.”

  “One thing at a time. First, we have to establish he was an agent. Then we’ll figure out what happened to his death benefits.”

  He nodded but couldn’t quite say anything else. His mind was blown. She seemed to realize he needed a minute because she respectfully offered him her silence. In fact, when their eyes met, he saw compassion. He looked away, staring across the creek’s edge and wondered if he’d ever known his father at all. He returned to Piper. “So what’s in it for you? Why are you digging into this?”

  Something heavy warred behind her brown eyes but she gave him nothing. She simply smiled and shrugged. “I can’t resist a good story.”

  He didn’t believe her for a second and he called her on it. “You’ve been after me for some time. Why are you digging up this story in particular? What’s your angle? I already told you I’m not comfortable with you writing about this, so I have to wonder what you have to gain.”

  She fidgeted with her pad. “It’s a pet project.”

  “That’s all?” he asked, peering at her, trying to discern if she was being truthful. “Seems like a lot of work for very little payout.”

  “Well, that’s your opinion,” she retorted. “I like having answers and the discovery of this possible cover-up was more than I could pass up. Even if I’m just digging around to satisfy my own curiosity.”

  She drew a deep breath, flashing him a bright smile, and he wondered if she thought by blinding him with her pearly whites he’d become so dazzled that he didn’t notice the tension in her shoulders. “Are you sure that’s it?” he asked. He held her stare, willing her to be honest with him, even if he didn’t like the answer.

  She faltered, then admitted, “I want the truth to come out. I hate the idea that someone might be unjustly accused, and your dad seems to fit the criteria. The Red Meadows incident, as it’s called in town, is a dark stain on the community yet no one is willing to talk about it. It made me wonder why. To my knowledge when people are hiding something they tend to want to bury it, which is exactly what happened with the Red Meadows raid. I mean, sure, there were the requisite news reports because hiding dead bodies is difficult, but it seemed too cut-and-dried, too easy. So I started asking around. I found a few people willing to give me tidbits of information that were nowhere near the story that was fed to the press. It fired me up and I wanted to know more. When I found the information about your dad, I knew I was looking at a full-scale cover-up that possibly went really high up the food chain.”

  “I can appreciate that,” he mused, but he had a niggling sense that she’d hoped to win her coveted Pulitzer with his father’s story. “But my intuition says you wanted more than just answers to a small-town mystery. You’ve already admitted to being ambitious. Forgive me if I’m a little wary.”

  “I won’
t apologize for my ambition,” she said, stiffening.

  He shook his head. “I’m not asking you to. But try to imagine if it were your family placed center stage in this tragedy. Would you still want the attention?”

  She hesitated, clearly choosing her answer carefully. “If my father was innocent of the atrocities he’d been accused of, I’d want everyone to know and if that meant shouting it from the rooftops, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

  “Even if your father didn’t want the publicity?”

  “Yes, I mean, no.” She appeared frustrated with his questions. “We’re not talking about me. I’ve already told you I’m not writing about this in the Tribune, so can we get back on task?”

  He wasn’t sorry he’d somehow touched a nerve. Maybe it would help her to understand how he felt. He wanted answers for his father but he wasn’t interested in being in the spotlight over it. He still had a business to run, and stirring the pot—even under the assumption that it might change people’s opinions—was a job he didn’t want. He wanted answers for himself. He needed to know that the man he’d loved wasn’t a monster after all. And for that, he was willing to endure the questions and the painful trip down memory lane.

  “My parents might be involved in some way,” she said, shocking him with her quiet admission. He could only stare, trying to process what she’d said. She shrugged, obviously troubled. “A source told me my parents were there at Red Meadows when it all went down. It could turn out to be idle gossip. My source wasn’t exactly someone I would feel comfortable relying upon.”

  “Why?”

  “Let’s just say her memory might be fallible.”

  “So this person is old?”

  “Very.”

  “Have you asked your parents about it?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  She gave a half-laugh that sounded very sad to his ears and he realized she’d been thrown by this information. He could relate.

  “Would you believe I’m not entirely sure they would tell me the truth?” she answered with a wry smile. “I grew up thinking my parents were incapable of lying, simply because everything in my household was always so open and nonjudgmental. If it’s true…I don’t know what it means.”