

Hot Southern Mess

a possum creek novel

GEN GRIFFIN
If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this stripped book.

HOT SOUTHERN MESS

A POSSUM CREEK NOVEL

Copyright © 2014 by Gen Griffin

All rights reserved.

ASIN: B00T9MQX7Y

ISBN 10: 1507635745

ISBN 13: 9781507635742

The uploading, scanning, and distribution of this book in any form or by any means — including but not limited to electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the permission of the copyright holder is illegal and punishable by law. Permission is granted to copy or reprint portions for any noncommercial use except they may not be posted online without permission. Please purchase only authorized editions of this work, and do not participate or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

###

### Also By Gen Griffin

### The Possum Creek Series

### Hot Southern Mess

### Hissy Fit

### Hot Southern Nights

### Pretty Is As Pretty Does

### Give Me Some Sugar (Coming Soon)

### Long Dead (Prequel Novella)

### After The Apocalypse

### The Scavengers

### Church of Chaos

### False Idols (Coming Fall/Winter 2015)

#  DEDICATION

To Stephen.

I love you always.

To Karen, Tracy and everyone else who helped with this book – you guys are awesome.

### Prologue

"Who did David kill for you?"

Gracie narrowed her eyes at the only man who she had ever loved. "David didn't kill anyone for me."

"I'm not playing with you, Gracie." Cal spoke the words through gritted teeth. His thick, dark eyebrows were furrowed tight with annoyance and worry. He was clenching the steering wheel of his truck so tightly that Gracie was starting to think the wheel might actually snap in two before this conversation was over. "I know you're trying to protect him, I can't help unless you tell me the truth about what happened Friday night."

"I already tried to tell you the truth. You wouldn't listen. Is there even a point in talking to you?" Gracie crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. "You keep accusing me of having sex with David."

"You were naked in his living room," Cal said. "What else would the two of you have been doing naked in the living room?"

"I was not naked." Gracie felt incredibly tired and even more incredibly annoyed. "I threw up on my shirt and so I took it off. I was still wearing my bra, my underwear and my skirt."

"That itty bitty scrap of fabric you had on was not a skirt," Cal said.

"Yes, it was."

"No way in hell. Too short."

"Ugh. You don't get a say in what I wear, Calvin. You broke up with me. I'm free to go out wearing whatever I want. I had a date and the skirt was cute."

"You went on a date with David?" Cal's skepticism was clear.

"No, you idiot." Gracie took a deep breath and tried to steel her nerves. "I went on a date with the dead guy."

Cal stopped short of whatever he'd been about to say. His mouth was hanging slightly open as he visibly tried to process this new bit of information. "You went on a date with the dead guy?"

"He wasn't dead when the date started," Gracie clarified.

"I wasn't under the impression he had been." Cal leaned his forehead against the steering wheel. "Gracie, you need to tell me everything that happened. Everything."

"Why?" Gracie asked. "You're just going to yell at me."

"I'm trying to help."

"If you truly wanted to help, you would have listened to what David and I were trying to tell you Friday night. You showed your ass when we tried to talk to you." Gracie blinked back an unexpected round of tears. "Do you really think any of us wanted this to happen?"

"How the hell am I supposed to know what y'all wanted to happen?" Cal demanded. "Y'all don't tell me anything."

"You want me to tell you something?" Gracie practically shouted the words at him. "I was scared to death when you saw me Friday night. I was crying. Sex was the last thing on my mind until you put it there. I'd just driven three hours in a stolen car while wondering how long Brett's body could stay in the BMW before it started to smell."

"What?" Cal frowned at her.

Gracie ignored him and kept talking. "The entire time I was driving home to Possum Creek, I was trying to come up with a reasonable explanation as to how Brett wound up dead in the backseat of his own car. I kept worrying about what I would tell the cops if I got pulled over. I drove 55 miles an hour the whole way home because I was terrified of being stopped or wrecking. There was so much fog on the road, I could barely see 20 feet in front of the car when I was on highway 14."

"Gracie-."

"I was scared, Cal. More scared than I have ever been in my whole life. Brett's body was in the backseat because I wasn't strong enough to lift him into the trunk. The car smelled like blood and vomit. I had to roll all the windows down as far as they would go just so I could breathe."

"Where was David?" Cal asked. "When you were driving down to Possum Creek with a body in the car, where was David? Why didn't he haul the body?"

"Why are you so fixated on David?" Gracie countered.

"Because he murdered someone for you," Cal sounded less certain than he had five minutes earlier.

"No. He didn't," Gracie shook her head at him. "Have you gone deaf or are you just so stubborn that you refuse to hear what I'm trying to tell you?"

"I'm waiting for you to talk to me." Cal threw his hands up into the air. "What the hell has gone wrong between us, Gracie?"

"Everything," Gracie replied.

"We've always been able to talk."

"You quit listening," Gracie told him. "You stopped listening to me a long time ago. We can talk all you want to, but what good does talking do when you don't listen?"

"I'm listening."

"No, you're arguing." Gracie rolled her turquoise blue eyes at him. "If you were listening, you'd be silent."

Cal opened his mouth and then closed it. He crossed his thick, muscular arms across his broad chest and waited. His annoyance was plain in the way he drummed the fingers of his right hand against the flesh of his left arm. If Gracie hadn't been so mad at him, she would have laughed.

"Are you really going to listen to me?"

Cal nodded. His lips were pressed tightly together.

Gracie took a deep breath. "You said you wanted to know everything that happened, right?"

He nodded again.

Gracie closed her eyes and tried to pull herself together. She needed to be able to think coherently if she was going to be able to explain to Cal how her entire life had gone to hell in her Granny Pearl's proverbial hand-basket. "I went on a date last Friday night. It didn't end well."

Cal raised on eyebrow at her skeptically. "Didn't end well is kind of an understatement, don't you think?"

"I thought you were going to shut up and listen?"

"Fine. Fine. I'm listening. Tell me how your date wound up dead in the trunk of his own car."

"Friday night, I went out on a date with this guy named Brett..."

### Chapter 1

Five Days Earlier

"You're a real bitch, you know that?" Brett Parker scowled at Gracie across the dimly lit interior of his overpriced BMW.

"And?" Gracie didn't feel the least bit sorry.

"You didn't need to hit me." He stuck his fingertips in his mouth and sucked on them.

"When a girl tells you to stop trying to stick your hand up her skirt, you should stop trying to stick your hand up her skirt." She wasn't surprised his hand hurt. Gracie's own thigh stung where she'd smacked her heavy leather purse down on top of Brett's creepy crawly fingers. He'd been trying to slip his hand under the hemline of her skirt without her noticing. Her reaction had been instinctive.

"Tonight was supposed to be magical. You aren't letting the magic between us happen." Brett shot her another baleful, disapproving glare.

"Magic?" Gracie couldn't help laughing. "We're at Take-A-Taco. In the drive-thru."

"What's wrong with Take-A-Taco?" Brett appeared genuinely insulted.

"Nothing. Unless you think it's magical. The only thing magical about a .29-cent taco special is that they managed to put any meat in the tortilla for that price." Gracie considered explaining her thoughts but then decided Brett Parker wasn't worth the effort. She twisted her long blonde hair up into a ponytail. She no longer cared if she messed up the delicate curls she'd spent two hours and a whole can of cheap hairspray creating. "You promised to take me out for a nice dinner. Take-A-Taco is pretty much the opposite of a nice dinner."

"You're just mad I asked you to pay for your own food." Brett reached for her arm and attempted to stroke her shoulder. She leaned closer to the door to avoid him. The car just wasn't wide enough. His fingers were clammy when they brushed against her arm. She didn't like the feel of his hands on her overexposed skin.

Gracie regretted letting Kelsey, her roommate, humiliate her into ditching her favorite tight jeans and paisley print halter top for the too short, too tight black skirt and silky black spaghetti strap top with a plunging neckline that left nothing about her b-cups to the imagination. Kelsey said Gracie needed to look sexy if she wanted to impress Brett. Gracie thought she looked like Hooker Barbie. Apparently, Brett thought so too. He had been shamelessly trying to grope her since they had left campus.

"Refusing to pay for my taco definitely isn't helping your cause." The car inched forward through the drive-thru lane. Gracie shook Brett's caressing hand off of her arm and gritted her molars together.

"I thought girls liked being viewed as equals?" Brett asked. "A lot of the girls I've met don't want me to open doors for them or pay for their food. You telling me you aren't one of those liberated chicks?"

"Not really," Gracie said. "Asking a girl out to dinner and then telling her she has to pay for her own $3 meal is rude."

"A lot of girls only want to date me because I have money." Brett admired his own reflection in the rear-view mirror. "Making girls pay for their own shit is my way of weeding out all the gold diggers, you know?"

"I honestly just think you're a cheap pervert."

"A pervert?" Brett glared at her. "Don't act like you're doing me a favor by being here. There are plenty of other girls on campus who would be more than willing to do anything I asked them to do. You didn't have to come out with me."

"And I wouldn't have agreed to go out with you if I had known that dinner and dancing at The Lounge would turn into driving in circles and Take-A-Taco." Gracie tried to remember why she had thought going on a date with State University's most notorious playboy would be fun.

"What can I do to make you want me?" Brett put his hand back on her thigh. His fingertips brushed against the hem of her skirt. Gracie picked his hand up and shoved it back into his own lap.

"Nothing." Gracie had never actually wanted Brett. She'd agreed to go on a date with him because she knew it would make Kelsey stupidly jealous.

Calvin Walker was the only guy Gracie ever wanted. Cal could sit behind the wheel of his truck and give her that come-on-over-here grin he'd been using since Little League, knowing that she'd practically melt into the ripped cloth seats of his jacked-up Chevy 1500. Brett wasn't in Cal's league. He wasn't even playing in the same ballpark.

"Nothing?" Brett's car moved ahead in the drive-thru lane by a single car-length. He pulled his hand back off of her thigh and began fidgeting restlessly with the collar on his $350 baby blue golf shirt. His phone chimed in his pocket.

"You're a liar and a pervert." Gracie said. "Not to mention that the girlfriend you promised me you didn't have has been texting you all night."

"You're a bitch. I'm thinking maybe I should give Susanna another chance." Brett smirked as he replied to the text message he'd just received.

"Maybe that's a good idea." Gracie wrinkled her nose at him in disgust. "It doesn't bother her you're a drug dealer?"

Brett's head jerked up and he nearly dropped the phone. "Hey, I am not-."

"Save your breath." Gracie waved one hand in the air dismissively. "I have ears. You promised to get someone a bottle of Lortabs and a two month supply of Viagra less than 10 minutes ago."

"I have connections." Brett didn't have the decency to look ashamed of himself. "It's good pocket money."

"I didn't think you needed the money?" The smell of greasy meat wafting through the air was making Gracie vaguely nauseous.

"You know, I can give you a little something to improve your mood," Brett told her with a bold smile. "I have a bottle full of little white pills that will have you screaming my name in ecstasy before the end of the night."

"Thanks, but no thanks." Gracie didn't try to hide her disgust. "You can keep the date rape drugs to yourself. I'm done."

"Done?" Brett repeated the word as a question as he drummed his fingers against the custom leather steering wheel cover.

"Done." She double checked her purse to make sure her wallet and keys hadn't spilled out during the drive.

"You're not done until I say you're done." Brett reached out and grabbed her wrist.

"Go to hell." She reached for the door handle as his phone chirped to announce the arrival of yet another text message.

"I don't think you understand how this works." Brett's gaze flickered over her. She could see the irritation in his eyes as she reached for the handle on the door. He made another attempt to get hold of her wrist. "You aren't in charge here."

"Have a nice night, Brett. I'll find my own way back to the dorm from here." She tugged on the door handle. Nothing happened. It took her a minute to process that the car had automatically locking doors. She pressed the unlock button on the armrest. Nothing happened. She pressed the button again. Still nothing. She turned back to Brett. "Why won't this door open?"

"It's locked. The only one who locks and unlocks the doors on my car is me. Sorry." Brett didn't look at all sorry.

"Not funny, Brett. Let me out." Gracie wondered if manually unlocking the door would override whatever he'd had done to keep her from being able to open it. She wished she didn't bite her nails as she examined the locking mechanism on the door.

"I can't let you out here. This neighborhood isn't safe. You're going to get mugged and raped if you try to walk through this neighborhood alone at night." Brett rubbed her wrist as he pretended to genuinely care about her safety.

"I'll take my chances." Gracie snatched her arm away from his manipulative caressing.

The car inched ahead in the drive-thru line on its own accord, nearly running into the bumper of the Ford truck ahead of them. Brett remembered to press the brake pedal with a quarter of an inch to spare.

His phone went off again. He looked down at the display on his phone and hurriedly put it back in his pocket.

Gracie wedged her fingers under the lock and pull it to the unlocked position. She tried the door handle again. Nothing happened.

"You're not getting out unless I decide to let you out." Brett laughed.

"Look, you have about thirty seconds to unlock this door." Gracie was beyond aggravated.

"Or what?" Brett taunted her.

"Or I'm going to scream bloody murder and say I'm being kidnapped when you pull up to the window to pay for your food." She gestured at the window that was a mere two cars away. "I'm sure your uncle's campaign manager would love to explain why the governor's nephew is kidnapping girls. That backpack full of pills in the back seat is perfectly legal, right?"

Brett's hazy blue eyes got wide. "You wouldn't."

"Try and stick your hand up my skirt one more time. See if I don't." Gracie kept one hand on the door handle as she spoke. She fully intended to bolt the moment the door unlocked. She'd take her chances with the imaginary muggers and rapists on the streets.

The truck in front of them pulled up to the window to pay. Brett didn't follow it. Instead he sat in the driver's seat staring daggers at her. The people in the truck in front of them received their food and pulled away from the drive-through window. Brett's BMW was now the only car in the line.

"You want to go back to school?" Brett glared at her furiously. "You got it."

He hit the accelerator with enough force to knock Gracie backwards into the passenger seat. He squealed his tires as he drove past the pick-up window without stopping to pay or picking up his food.

Gracie cursed under her breath as Brett's car slid sideways on the pavement and barreled out onto the main road, heading the opposite direction from campus.

### Chapter 2

Kerry Longwood was nearly overwhelmed by an impending sense of doom as he stared at the short, squat brick building that was home to the Callahan County Sheriff's Department. A tarnished CCSD badge sat in his left hand like a lead weight.

"I reckon it's official. We get two weeks to prove ourselves, huh?" Ian McIntyre leaned against the side of his battered S10 pickup truck and studied his own dull, second-hand sheriff's deputy's badge. He was rubbing at it with the hem of a Breedlove Automotive t-shirt in an attempt to knock some of the rust off.

"Two weeks." Kerry glanced down at his cell phone to check the time. He wondered why he continued to pay the phone bill. No one had called Kerry in weeks.

"I bet you ain't nervous." Ian raked his fingers through his strawberry blonde hair and shrugged his slim shoulders. "You're way better qualified for this job than I am. You've got a bunch of degrees, right?"

Kerry looked up at Ian in surprise. He hadn't expected the Sheriff's favorite job candidate to acknowledge his own credentials. "I have a bachelor's degree in Criminology and a master's in Criminal Law. I've passed all the state police certifications as well as basic firefighter and EMT courses. If I were anywhere but Callahan County, the certificates might be worth more than the paper they're printed on."

"What do you mean?" Ian looked baffled.

"I mean that it's total bullshit that the Sheriff has put us both on a two-week trial period. I've busted my butt educating myself to become a law enforcement officer. What qualifications do you have?"

"All I have is the basic law enforcement certificate from Callahan County Community College." Ian stared at his badge regretfully.

"And yet, Sheriff Chasson considers us equal candidates for this job?" Kerry could hear the bitter resignation in his own voice. "I was halfway through law school when I had to move back to Possum Creek."

"Yeah. I'd heard that. I'm sorry about your Dad." Ian kicked at the gravel in the parking lot. His scuffed, battered boots created a sharp contrast to Kerry's own stiff, shiny loafers.

"Don't be," Kerry said. "He was so drunk he probably never saw the bridge that killed him."

"Still. He was your Dad. My Dad died when I was 15. I still miss him." Ian's sympathy appeared to be genuine but Kerry didn't want his competition's sympathy. "You moved back to take care of your Mom, didn't you?"

"Didn't have a choice," Kerry admitted. "Mom has been bedridden since I was eight. We tried to put her in a nursing home but she screamed until her throat bled every time her sedatives wore off. The psychiatrist says she's developed a phobia about leaving the house."

"That's too bad." Ian probably meant it. Kerry's return to Possum Creek meant Ian didn't stand a prayer of hanging on to the badge he was holding.

"It's life." Kerry frowned down at the tassels on his loafers and fought the urge to tell Ian to go away. He didn't want to cause unnecessary hard feelings. Ian was the only member of the CCSD who treated him like a human being. He was going to have to work with Ian until the trial period ended and the Sheriff was left with no choice except to hire him. Kerry was, without question, the best qualified candidate for the single open deputy position.

"I really need this job." Ian rubbed his face with the palms of his hands. "I've been bagging groceries down at the Save 'N Shop since graduation."

"Bagging groceries?" Kerry clenched his badge more tightly in his hand.

"Yeah. It was Frank's – Sheriff Chasson's idea for me to take the classes to become a deputy." Ian shrugged. "He didn't know that you would be moving back to town right at the same time as the position finally opened up."

"I was surprised when I saw it advertised." Kerry already suspected Sheriff Chasson had promised Ian the job well before the legally required advertisement had been published in the classifieds.

If Sheriff Chasson had been able to get away with chucking Kerry's application in the trash can and hiring Ian, he would have. Kerry had politely informed the Sheriff that he knew state law required the most qualified candidate for a public service job to be hired.

The Sheriff had responded by hiring both Kerry and Ian on with the department for a two-week trial period. Whichever one of them proved to be the better deputy would be hired on full time.

Kerry knew the Sheriff had meant it when he'd told him he'd be watching his every minute on the clock. Not that Kerry was too worried. He hadn't gone to all those classes for nothing. Kerry was confident that Ian's time in uniform was going to make for a very short two weeks. Especially considering that his competition had spent the last two or three years bagging groceries.

"Not that it's any of my business, but why do you want this job?" Ian startled Kerry with the question.

"I need something to keep me busy while I'm stuck in Callahan County." Kerry stared at the bumper on his car. Applying for the job with the Callahan County Sheriff's Department had been Kerry's last ditch effort to keep from sinking fully into the bleak depression that had been overwhelming him since he'd left law school. Not that he thought working day-in and day-out with the same backwoods boys he'd fled Callahan County to get away from was going to be all that enjoyable of an experience. He just felt an overwhelming urge to be doing something with his life.

"Oh," Ian frowned.

"Besides, too many innocent people around here get cheated when they deserve justice," Kerry said. "No offense, but this is a small town. If you're not from around here, the law around here doesn't care about you."

"What do you mean?" Ian appeared genuinely puzzled.

Kerry closed his eyes as the familiar memory of a laughing 13-year-old-girl with dark hair and darker eyes sprung into his mind. He swallowed regretfully and pushed Casey's cheerful face out of his mind so he could focus on Ian. "I'm talking about the kids who get beat up and bullied every day after school. The families who lose everything they care about because they make the wrong person mad. I'm talking about the rapes that don't get prosecuted because the victim is from a bad family and the rapist is from a good one."

"You think that kind of stuff happens a lot around here?"

Casey's face flashed before Kerry's eyes again. "Do you remember a girl named Casey Black?"

Ian, still leaning against his truck, blanched. "Didn't she go missing a long time ago?"

"Sheriff Chasson decided she ran away." Kerry couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice. "Last time anyone saw her she was going into the woods behind David Breedlove's house."

"Oh," Ian frowned at Kerry as he fingered the hem on his t-shirt again. A t-shirt that was advertising David Breedlove's mechanic shop. "David didn't do nothing to Casey. Those were just rumors when people said he'd hurt her. I know him better than that. David wouldn't hurt no one."

"David Breedlove is a dangerous and cruel son-of-a-bitch." Kerry held his badge up in the air. "I've spent every waking minute since high school studying the law. Now that I'm back here, I'm going to put what I've learned to good use. I'm here for justice. Getting justice for Casey is the first thing I aim to do."

### Chapter 3

Cal stared impassively out the front window of the diner, attentively not listening to Jo Beth's incessant stream of chatter.

"Aunt Heather called Rachelle yesterday and just plain out asked if Tate had really told her or if she was assuming it because of everything that had happened with Julia. She said, supposedly, that she heard it from Melissa Rae. My first question was, of course, how Melissa would know anything about what was going on with Tate, since everyone knows Tate hasn't talked to her since that whole family reunion ordeal..." Jo Beth's plump, glossy pink lips opened and closed repeatedly, showing off flashes of straight, white teeth. Every so often, the stream of chatter would pause. She would turn her big liquid brown eyes on Cal, take a dainty little bite of her fried chicken salad, and wait for him to comment on whatever bit of gossip or trivial information he had been pretending to be paying attention to.

"Kellie pointed out that Rachelle could only have done it when Ben was out of town, because otherwise it would have caused too much trouble with the driveway. At first we were like, that doesn't make any sense, but the more I thought about it, well, it's like I told Mom..."

Cal was entertaining himself by staring at Main Street through the plate glass windows of the Possum Creek Diner. He was watching vehicles drive past and seeing how many of them he recognized. He hadn't missed one yet.

The plate glass was convenient because it superimposed his reflection over the view of the street, allowing him to watch traffic and Jo Beth at the same. Whenever she stopped talking and looked directly at him, he'd nod or grunt as a sign he was paying attention. She would go back to talking.

Two trucks passed by the diner window. Cal identified the first one as Jerry Dean's Dodge Dakota and the second as Ian McIntyre's S10. A 1980s model Camaro came down the street next, looking low and sleek in the dim light provided by the streetlights. Cal held his breath for a half a second, hoping against all logic or reason that it was Gracie's car. It wasn't. The car was a couple years too new and silver instead of hunter green. Alan Brown's mid-life crisis-mobile.

Cal forced his attention back to his girlfriend. He nodded without the slightest idea what he was nodding about when she paused to suck down a couple ounces of her sweet tea.

"I was telling Rebecca that Ben probably doesn't have anything to worry about with Rachelle. It would be completely impractical for her to have to deal with something like that. Not to mention that Melissa Rae doesn't know a thing she's talking about, but really, who can expect anything else from Melissa Rae? Well, I thought the whole situation was done with, but no. Yesterday Tate calls Mom and tells her that he doesn't know why Rebecca is telling everyone that Ben and Rachelle are getting a new house. Can you believe that?" Jo paused, looked directly at him and got no response. "Cal?"

A full-size 4x4 Ford truck was pulling into the diner's narrow parking lot. It was slate gray with a light bar on the roof and a heavy metal, police-issue brush guard with a winch bumper. The driver pulled straight up in front of the window where they were sitting and flashed the set of day-lighter aftermarket headlights that were mounted on the beefy brush guard.

"Cal?" Jo Beth was looking at him expectantly, completely oblivious to the Ford outside the window.

"Addison's here." He gestured out the window as the truck impatiently flashed its lights again.

"Lovely. Just the person I didn't want to see. He's not eating with us." Jo blinked in annoyance as Addy flashed his lights a third time. "Why is he doing that?"

"I don't think he's here to eat. He probably just wants to talk."

"Hasn't he ever heard of a cell phone?" Jo glared in Addy's direction. She looked just as happy as she would have if she had unexpectedly been sprayed by a skunk. "You did tell him that Friday night is our date night, right?"

"He knows." Cal stood up and tugged his wallet out of his back pocket. "I'm going to go see what he wants before he blinds us."

"Cal, remember that we already have plans," Jo's voice had a warning tone to it.

"I haven't forgotten." He flipped his debit card out and laid it on top of the ticket the waitress had left on the table. He heard Jo's voice echo out behind him as he headed out the front door.

"I take it this means we're done with dinner?"

### Chapter 4

"You better be taking me back to school." Gracie was scared but she tried not to let it show as Brett screeched his expensive car through sharp turn after sharp turn.

"I'll take you wherever I want to take you." The busy, well lit roads of town were rapidly being replaced by rural two lanes and dirt. The speedometer needle was bouncing back and forth between 85 and 90 miles per hour. The last speed limit sign Gracie had seen labeled the road they were on as a 45 mph zone.

"Like hell you will." Gracie yanked on the door handle again. It still didn't budge. "Stop this car and let me out."

"You're a whiny little bitch. You know that?" Brett turned the car onto a darker, less populated road. He showed no sign of the flirty charm he'd used to entice Gracie to go out with him in the first place.

"And you're a creep." Gracie used her anger to hide the ever growing fear she felt. She wished that she'd never left Possum Creek to come to State University. Brett wouldn't have dared treat Gracie this way back home. No one treated any girl this way. Not if they wanted to live.

The last guy who had called Gracie a bitch had spent the next hour picking his teeth up out of the Gas 'N Go parking lot courtesy of her older brother's right hook.

"I bet this is the only date you've ever been on." Brett was sweating despite the chilly night air that was blasting through his open window. "You're dressed like a whore but act like you think you're too fucking good for me."

"A whore?" Gracie's head was filled with white hot fury. " I guess you're just too stupid to understand the difference between looking sexy and dressing like a slut. I've been on plenty of dates. Believe me."

"Going up to the interstate in Billy Bob's truck to eat at the Waffle House doesn't count as dating." Brett mashed down on the accelerator.

Gracie blinked and tried not to let it show how much that last barb stung. She'd been teased mercilessly about how thick her Southern accent was ever since she'd come to State University. Kelsey mocked her because her favorite outfit consisted of worn soft blue jeans and flip-flops. It didn't help that she could drink Jack Daniels straight from the bottle but nearly threw up a chocolate martini.

"We aren't going the right direction to get back to school." Gracie forced herself to focus on the situation at hand as she blinked back unexpected tears.

"Will you shut up already?" Brett was staring straight ahead and clutching the steering wheel with both hands. "We're going the back way."

"There is no back way," Gracie gestured out the window at the acres of trees they were passing. There were almost no houses to be seen on the rural country road. "Main campus is in the center of town. You're driving us straight into the middle of nowhere. I grew up in the middle of nowhere. I know what it looks like."

"You're not getting scared are you?" Brett was clearly pleased with the slight tremble in her voice.

"No." Gracie tried to hide the goosebumps that were cropping up on her exposed flesh. She was tempted to go for her phone, but she didn't have anyone to call for help who was within 200 miles of State University. Gracie Malone was on her own without anyone to save her. It wasn't a particularly comforting feeling as she watched the last house on the side of the road gradually fade into nothing but rows and rows of trees.

Gracie desperately wished someone would come save her. Correction, she wished Cal would come save her. Right this moment she would be willing to deal with Cal's absolute fury if it meant never seeing Brett again as long as she lived. She'd give anything to be curled up in the middle seat of Cal's truck with his arm around her, just driving through the woods. Or up to the Cracker Barrel by the interstate for dinner. Or anywhere. Just as long as she was back with him and far, far away from Brett Parker and State University.

Gracie fought the panic that was bubbling up into her throat. She dug her fingers into her purse and searched quietly for her phone. If she had to call 911 in order to get out of this mess, then she would. She had just brushed her fingertips across the top of the cool plastic case when Brett unexpectedly hit the brakes. He snatched the car sideways onto a small, dark narrow side road.

She slid into the passenger's side door of the car with an oomph! The side of her head hit the glass in the window and the impact brought tears to her eyes.

Brett sped up as he straightened the front wheels on the pavement.

### Chapter 5

"You just wrecked any chance I had of getting laid tonight." Cal walked towards the parking space where Addison was leaning on the hood of his county-issued truck. He was wearing a stained, wrinkled game warden's uniform and smoking a Marlboro Red.

Cal held out his hand and gestured for the pack of cigarettes before Addy opened his mouth. The box immediately landed in his palm. He pulled a lighter that was shaped like a naked woman's torso out of the cellophane wrapper and lit a forbidden cigarette. The burn of the smoke felt good as he pulled it into his lungs.

"Thought you were quitting." Addison shot Cal a smug smile as he laid the rest of the pack of cigarettes on the hood of the gray truck.

"She's already got something to be mad about tonight. What's a cigarette gonna hurt?" Cal leaned back against the Ford, staring up at the first couple of stars to appear in the clear night sky.

"Date night, isn't it?" Addison didn't try to look sorry as Cal nodded. "You ought to be thanking me. I did you a favor." He gestured through the window. They watched as Jo Beth scooped up the check and Cal's debit card. She toted them to the register while keeping up a solid stream of conversation with the petite brunette waitress. The waitress glanced back through the window. She caught sight of Addison and grinned, waving cheerily when Jo wasn't looking. "You need to trade that one in on a less bitchy model."

"It doesn't work like that." Cal took another deep drag of the cigarette. He coughed slightly as the smoke saturated his lungs and burned there. Jo was right. He needed to quit. "Are you here for a reason or did you just show up for the sheer pleasure of ruining my night?"

"It's a sad day when seeing your best friend ruins your night." Addison made a tsk-tsking noise at him. "Does the name Kerry Longwood mean anything to you?"

"Should it?" Cal tried to remember who Kerry was. "The name sounds vaguely familiar but I can't put a face with it."

"Ian said everyone used to call him Crybaby Kerry," Addison offered with a shrug. "He also mentioned that David beat the hell out of him on a regular basis when y'all were in high school. I figured you might remember the guy. You were normally the one pulling David off of people in high school."

"Ok, yeah. I know who you're talking about. I always felt sorry for him," Cal said with a nod. The memories were coming back to him from middle school and high school. "David had some anger management issues back then. Kerry was a scrawny kid with a big mouth and a twitchy eye. I think the twitch was David's fault."

"David still has anger management issues." Addison frowned and took a deep breath. "Kerry just came back to Possum Creek with a Master's Degree in Criminal Justice and a burning desire for revenge against everyone who ever looked at him funny. He's applied for the open deputy position with the Sheriffs' Department. Uncle Frank thinks Kerry is going to try to run for Sheriff come the next election."

"Why the hell would Kerry want to be the Sheriff of Callahan County?" Cal was genuinely baffled.

"He told Ian that he wants to revolutionize law enforcement here. He's making a lot of noise about equality. He says he's going to put a stop to favoritism within our local law enforcement community. Those would be his words, by the way, not mine."

"Huh. I thought Ian was the one filling that deputy position."

"Uncle Frank's been planning on hiring him. Now Kerry's the most qualified candidate on paper. Apparently there is some kind of policy that says the most qualified candidate for a public service job is the one that is supposed to be hired. That's where we come in."

"Wait. What?" Cal suddenly didn't like where this conversation was headed. It didn't help that Addison had a peculiar gleam in his eyes that Cal had long ago learned to associate with doing something that could get them all arrested. Getting arrested was a particularly challenging feat to accomplish when you took into consideration that Addison was, technically, a cop.

Addy must have read his mind. He crossed his arms over his chest and double checked the police-issue radio on his belt to make sure the transmitter was turned off.

"Uncle Frank is putting Ian and Kerry both on trial with the department starting tomorrow. He told me and Ian that we need to make sure Kerry's trial period goes like hell if we don't want him taking over. If the trial period is a disaster and we can prove Kerry's completely incompetent, Uncle Frank can justify hiring Ian instead."

"Sounds like half-assed way to screw somebody out of a job." Cal considered the possibilities. "What does David have to say about all this?"

"He doesn't know yet. I'm fixing to head over there as soon as I leave here. I just need to know that you're in. You've always been the best at coming up with plans that work without landing us all in jail on murder charges." Addison turned unexpectedly serious. All signs of good humor and amusement disappeared from his face. "Speaking of murder charges, Kerry already told Ian he's planning to go after David for killing Casey Black. He wants to try and charge David with the murder even though no one has ever found her body."

"David didn't kill Casey Black," Cal watched Jo Beth storm out of the diner. She shot Addison a death glare and then stomped across the parking lot to Cal's truck. Her kitten heels made a loud tapping noise as they struck the asphalt. He checked his pocket for his keys. Date night wouldn't work out too well if she drove off without him.

"I know that. You know that. Kerry, on the other hand?" Addison trailed off with a shrug of his shoulders. He leaned against the truck and crossed his arms over his chest.

"Point is, I'm not going to be able to stop Kerry from going after David if he's a deputy and Ian isn't. Are you in?"

"Doesn't sound like I have much of a choice." Cal straightened his back and scowled in the direction of his truck. He was not looking forward to the prospect of dealing with Jo Beth any more than he was looking forward to sabotaging Kerry. Addison followed his gaze.

"I heard you bought a diamond ring." Addison shot Cal a look that implied he had lost his mind.

"Where did you hear that?" Cal tried to conceal his irritation and failed. Instead, he extracted a second cigarette from Addison's pack of Marlboros. He lit it even though he could still feel the smoke from the first cigarette burning in his lungs.

"You bought it from Laurie Marsden. She thought you were sweet and told me all about it. I think she was hinting around that I should consider doing the same."

"Dammit." Cal tried not to look towards the other end of the parking lot where Jo was impatiently sitting and waiting in his own Chevy. "If you know that means the whole goddamned county knows."

"That's not why I brought it up." Addy tugged thoughtfully on the fraying hem of his state uniform shirt. "As your friend, I feel obligated to stop you from completely fucking up your life by marrying Jo Beth."

"Jo Beth is a good girl."

"Not for you." Addison shot a look of loathing in the direction of Cal's truck. "She reminds me of your Dad."

"You've lost me."

"Your dad has tried to control your life since the day you were born. Play it safe. Be practical. Make smart choices. Don't ever take any risks. Jo Beth is exactly the same way. It's not good for you. You need a little bit of excitement in your life." Addison frowned. "You start getting mad at the world anytime you're around your dad for too long. Prolonged exposure to Jo Beth has the same effect. You're not happy with her."

"I should be happy with her." Cal wondered if he was trying to convince himself or Addison. "She has a lot of good qualities."

"She's making you miserable and you're too stubborn to realize it. She's nosy as hell and never shuts up. Every time I see you with her, you're staring off into the distance like you'd rather be somewhere else while her jaw flaps and flaps. Plus, she's a bitch."

"She's not a bitch. She just doesn't like you," Cal pointed out.

"You marry her and next thing you know you'll be wearing matching sweater sets to church revivals and driving a minivan for the rest of your life. You'll never fish or hunt again. Your boat will rot in your yard until she forces you to sell it. Once you sell it you're going to spend the rest of your life doing Jo Beth's bidding." Addy crossed his arms over his chest. "You know it's a big ocean. Lots of fish in the sea. Marry someone who can clean a fish."

"Your logic needs work." Cal was still trying to connect the dots on Addison's fish analogy. "Just because I bought the ring doesn't necessarily mean I'm planning on popping the question tomorrow. Why do you think that ring has been sitting in my glove box since I bought it?"

Addison's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "You've got the ring in your glove box?"

"I'm having commitment issues," Cal admitted as he blew hot air out his bottom lip and played with his cigarette. Addison shot him a wicked grin that Cal knew better than to trust.

"What are you planning?"

Addison didn't answer as he started walking across the parking lot, taking long, even strides until he reached the passenger side of Cal's Z71. Cal hesitated for a couple of seconds before reluctantly following after him. Addison yanked open the passenger side door and grinned up at Jo Beth, exhaling a long drag of cigarette smoke directly into her face.

"What the? Get off of me!" Jo demanded as Addy leaned across her knees and popped the glove box open.

"I'm out of condoms." He smiled broadly as she coughed on his cigarette smoke. "I need to borrow some." He yanked something out of the glove box and quickly jammed it into his pocket. He winked at Jo Beth as he slammed the glove box closed and shut the door of the truck. He was grinning like a mad man when he turned back around to face Cal.

"What did you just do?"

Addison reached into his pocket and proudly displayed a small black velvet box in the palm of his right hand.

"I've decided you're unstable and don't need to be making life-altering decisions right now." Addison began heading back towards his own truck. The police radio on his belt crackled. The dispatcher informed him that Lou Kramer had poachers in his back pasture and wanted Addison to come deal with them in the next five minutes or he was going to shoot them himself.

Addison gestured to the pocket where he'd put the ring. "You're not getting this back until you can convince me that you really _want_ to get married."

Cal considered arguing then decided it wasn't worth the trouble.

Addison started to walk away again when someone called his name.

"Addison, wait!"

Cal turned to see the waitress from the restaurant coming towards the truck with a bag that appeared to have several to-go boxes in it.

Addy stepped back out of his truck and smiled at her as she handed the bag to him.

"I thought you might be hungry." The girl was gazing up into his turquoise blue eyes with pure adoration. "There's a cheeseburger with everything, fries and a slice of cheesecake in there."

"Thanks." Addison smiled at her benevolently as he laid on the charm. "I really appreciate it. I'm about to go on another call, but it sure will be nice to have a warm dinner waiting for me when I get finished."

"Glad I could give it to you. I have to go back inside now." The girl blushed a bright pink and turned away, scurrying back inside the diner.

"Another one of your girlfriends?" Cal rolled his eyes.

"No. But today might just be her lucky day. She wrote her number on the top of the cheesecake box." Addison grinned at him as he opened the bag of food.

"Jesus Christ." Cal shook his head in complete disgust. "They just throw themselves at you."

"What can I say? It's the Malone charm." Addy grinned cockily and held his arms out in a broad shrug.

"I hope the poachers shoot your sorry ass," Cal muttered. "I'm never going to understand how you do it." They both knew he wasn't talking about Addison's duties as a game warden.

"It's easy. Pick a girl. Make sure to talk real nice to her. She'll jump into the cab of your truck with her legs spread wide open."

"I wouldn't want one that jumped into my truck with her legs spread." Cal shook his head in disgust.

"Naw, I reckon the only one you really want is my kid sister." Addison put out the stubby end of his cigarette and let the words sink in. "I think you ought to drive up there to State University and go get her."

"Gracie doesn't want me," Cal said flatly. "There's no way in hell I'm driving three hours for her to tell me again. I heard her the first time."

"Gracie wants you. She's just too proud to admit it," Addison announced as if he had thought about this for a while. "I talked to her yesterday. She's miserable. The only reason she ain't come home already is her damned, stupid pride. She fought Daddy so hard to get to go away to college that she ain't about to admit she made a bad choice. Every time I ask her how it's going, she gets that forced, fake-happy voice that she uses when she's telling Granny Pearl how much fun she had at last year's church revival."

"Gracie hasn't gone to a youth revival since she was 10." Cal tried to act like he didn't care how Gracie felt or if she missed him even though Addison knew it was a lie. "There's nothing between me and her. She doesn't want me. I'm over it. I've got my own pride. Gracie can live her life and I'll live mine."

Addison shook his head after a moment. He shrugged as he put the food in the cab of his truck. His radio crackled again as he climbed behind the wheel. "Keep telling yourself that. You're a proud, stubborn bastard. Call me if you come up with a reason for me to give that diamond back."

### Chapter 6

"Brett, stop the car." Gracie sounded desperate but right this moment she didn't care. She didn't want to be trapped in a car that was going way too fast around tight curves with steep drop-offs next to the road.

His mocking laugh was anything but comforting. "Scared yet?"

"I want out of this car. Now."

"Too bad." Brett continued to speed up. "I'll take you back to school once I'm done with you.

"Done with me?" Gracie repeated his words unsure if she had heard him correctly. When he didn't correct her, she blinked at him and then twisted in the seat so she could face him head on. "Let me out of this car."

"Not until I get what I want from you." Brett spoke through clenched teeth as he swerved recklessly around a single, slow moving car that was blocking the lane. He used both hands to grip the steering wheel as they flew past the other vehicle and then continued to accelerate.

"You don't want to do this." Gracie watched the headlights of the only other vehicle for miles fade rapidly away as their speed increased. "Slow down. You're going to kill us both."

"You might die tonight. I'm going to live forever." He shook his head so hard drops of sweat flew off his forehead. Gracie looked hard at him. Brett was pouring sweat despite traveling at nearly 90 miles an hour with his window wide open and the air condition running on full blast. His artificially tan skin had turned a sickly shade of pale green.

Gracie absolutely had to get out of this car. Now.

"Brett, I'm about to call the cops," she said. "Pull the hell over. I'm done with you, and I want to get out."

Brett laughed. "You really think the cops will find you before I have my way with you?"

"You don't want to do this." She tried to keep her voice steady as she debated the likelihood that she could grab the wheel and snatch the car off the road without rolling it and killing both of them. The odds were not in her favor. "Rape is a serious crime. You'll go to jail for a long time.

"Not if you can't tell anyone." Brett practically spat the words at her as he turned onto another deserted rural road. His sweat soaked shirt, pale complexion, rapid breathing and massively dilated pupils told Gracie that whatever fantasy was playing out in his drug-addled, paranoid brain right now wasn't good.

"You're going to kill me?" Gracie nearly choked on the words.

"I'm going to have my way with you. Its up to you whether you take it like a good little girl."

The car began to slow and Gracie realized he had taken his foot off the gas. Gracie slid her hand deep into the depths of her purse. She felt the hard plastic case of her phone brush against the palm of her hand, but she reached past it.

The car slid to a stop in the grass on the side of the narrow, deserted road. "You going to suck me off like a good little whore or are you going to make this fun for me?"

"Neither." Gracie put her back flat against the passenger side door as he advanced. Her fear was quickly souring into fury now that the car had stopped moving. She'd never had the good sense to be afraid of much of anything and Brett was no exception.

"You can't fight me forever." He cut the engine off and leered at her with a predatory grin. He leaned across the center console of the car. She was disconcerted to realize that he had managed to unzip the fly on his jeans at some point during the drive. He pressed his crotch towards her. He smelled strongly of sweat mingled with faded cologne. "I own you."

"Go to hell." Gracie pulled her hand back out of her purse. Brett failed to notice the palm-sized .22 caliber pistol she was holding as he once again attempted to jam his hand underneath her skirt. "Let me out of this car."

Brett sneered at her. "You're nothing more than an uppity little bitch. You're hot, but you're nothing but a little tease. I don't like being teased. I'm not the kind of guy you get away with teasing."

He grabbed the strap of Gracie's skimpy black silk tank top and yanked it. The thin fabric ripped easily, exposing the thin lacy push-up bra she'd bought a long time ago with someone else in mind.

Gracie pulled the trigger.

The boom from the tiny gun echoed deafeningly through the car. The gun kicked hard against her hand as Austin's nose exploded in a burst of blood and bone. His head snapped back as she drew her knees up and kicked him with every bit of strength she had. He howled in pain and rage.

"You fucking bitch!" Brett fell against the driver's side door clutching his bleeding face and gasping. Brett raised his head up and looked directly at Gracie with furious hatred in his blue eyes. Blood poured from his exposed nasal cavity. He leaned forward and she thought he was going to try to grab her again when his eyes widened abruptly and he stopped mid-motion. A choked, rasping gasp forced its way out of his throat and Gracie saw a bubble of blood form between his lips. Brett stretched out his hand towards her. His eyes were wide with panic as he gasped for air. His entire body began convulsing.

Gracie watched with a mixture of shock and horror as Brett clawed at his ruined face. His head hit the headrest of the seat and then slammed into the steering wheel. His right arm smashed into the window hard enough to fracture the glass. He let out one gurgling scream and then crumpled against the steering wheel with blood running out from between his lips.

Gracie didn't move a muscle. She sat silently in the passenger's seat of the BMW with her gun still in her hand and watched Brett die.

### Chapter 7

Jo Beth didn't say a word when Cal opened the door of his truck and heaved himself into the driver's seat. She didn't need to. Her knees were clamped together and her hands were clasped tightly on top of her fat, frilly pink purse. She was making full body contact with the passenger side door and staring straight ahead out of the windshield. Her body language told Cal he was welcome to go fuck himself without her ever having to open her mouth.

Cal ignored her. He turned the key in the truck's ignition and smiled when the V8 engine roared to life in response. The exhaust pipes rattled as he clicked the gearshift into drive. He pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator and was pleased by how quickly the truck lurched into motion.

Addison was pulling out ahead of him. The gray Ford paused at the edge of the diner's parking lot and waited until there were no cars in view coming from either direction. Addison slid the truck out of the parking lot with its tires screaming as the Chevy filled with white smoke and the aroma of burning rubber.

"Idiot," Jo Beth muttered under her breath.

Cal checked briefly for traffic and then nailed his own accelerator to the floor. The Chevy roared into the roadway. The oversize mud tires were screaming as he held the brake under one foot and slid the truck out across the pavement leaving a pair of black streaks in the road behind him.

"Good God Calvin!" Jo bounced roughly against the passenger side of the door. "That was stupid. What if there had been a cop?"

"The only cop around here is Addy. He did it first," Cal replied.

"Y'all are both idiots." Her broad forehead furrowed ominously. "What did he want, anyway? Besides condoms so he could go sleep with our waitress without having to worry about spreading any of the STD's he's already caught."

Cal laughed.

She let out an exasperated sigh. "Did he have a decent excuse for ruining our dinner?"

"He didn't ruin dinner. He didn't show up until we were just about done."

"If I see Addison from behind standing half a mile away it ruins my day."

"Is it because he's my friend or because you're the only girl in town that he hasn't slept with?"

"It's because he's a creep." She brushed her fingers through her bangs and frowned at him.

"You seem to be the only girl with that opinion."

"You must not talk to very many girls," Jo shook her head. "Addison has ruined more than a few lives."

"I don't know if I'd take it that far." Cal raised an eyebrow in her direction. "He has a tendency to love-em-and-leave-em but it's not like they don't know that when they get with him."

"You don't do it."

"I'm not that kind of guy."

Jo smiled gently at him. "I know. That's one of the reasons why I love you so much."

Cal bit the inside of his lip. He was thinking about the $6,500 diamond ring that was now in Addison's pocket. He hoped Addison wouldn't pawn it and spend the money on lottery tickets. He hoped Addison would at least split the lotto winnings with him if he did. Cal hit the accelerator harder and rolled down the window intending to clear his head with a blast of cool fall air.

"Can you roll that up please? It's too cold." Jo's ponytail was whipping against the side of her head and she was frowning at him again.

Cal sighed and rolled the window up partly. "It's stuffy in here."

"It wouldn't be if you had a working air conditioner," she pointed out. "By the way, have you given any more thought about the trade-in sale we're having next month?"

"Not really." He patted the Chevy's steering wheel affectionately. "I'm kinda partial to this old bucket of bolts."

"You've been driving it since you were in high school." Jo Beth raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow at him. "The credit union is doing all the financing. I can push your paperwork through for a brand new gas saver car at our lowest interest rate. I can probably get you the maximum trade value for the truck. You would only have to pay around 20K for the car."

"I need a truck for work," he said flatly. Addison's warnings about Jo Beth and minivans were still fresh in his mind.

"Y'all have the shop truck for work. I don't want to hear that excuse."

"Fine then. I just don't want a car." It occurred to Cal that conversations like this were exactly why the ring was in Addison's pocket instead of on Jo Beth's finger. Not that Jo Beth's finger was where he'd envisioned that ring going when he'd bought it. The gaudy diamond set in an antique band was exactly Gracie's style. He'd bought it because it was perfect for her. He'd thought she would come to her senses and take him back. She hadn't. Now everyone in town apparently thought he was going to propose to Jo Beth any day. He really hated living in a small town sometimes.

"How much are you paying a week in gas right now?" Jo brought him back to the discussion about why he should trade in a truck he loved for a car he didn't want.

"I can afford it."

"Can you, really?" Jo clucked her tongue at him and went into her bank teller/savings manager mode. "Just go with me for a minute here. Let's just say this truck gets 15 miles to the gallon, which is probably being generous. A small car will get at least 30 mpg. That's being conservative. Most new models are getting 40 to 50 mpg right off the lot. That's a minimum of twice as many miles to every gallon of gas. If you're spending $100 a week in fuel, which I know you are, you would only have to spend $50 with a car."

"I never said you didn't have a point." Cal closed his eyes briefly as he made the turn onto the road that would take them to her house for their weekly movie night. He couldn't remember what movie it was they were supposed to be watching. He just recalled that it was some ridiculously sad, tragically romantic thing. Jo Beth would cry from the beauty of it and Cal would entertain himself by mentally balancing Walker Hardware's weekly invoices while he watched it.

"Okay. Go ahead and figure that you can take the extra money you're spending in gas and put it into a high interest savings account or CD. Investing or saving $50 a week will give you a nest egg of $1,200 within 6 months. That is without the interest. Easily $2,500 a year. Figure the car will last you at least 10 years if you take care of it. The car will pay for itself completely just in the amount of money you'd be saving in fuel costs." She looked at him sideways across the cab of the truck. "Not to mention the cost of repairs. Trading this money pit in on a car would be practical. How many parts have you replaced in the last 3 months?"

"Maybe I'm not in the mood to be practical." Cal didn't care that he was being stubborn and surly. "What the heck am I supposed to do with a car during hunting season?"

Jo paused, thoughtfully considering the options. "Drive your Dad's truck, or Pappy's? You really only manage to shoot something what, three to five times a year?"

"Something like that," Cal agreed. Less than that last year. Not that he was admitting to it.

"Just think of it the same way you did when you quit smoking. It's a relatively small sacrifice you can make now that will have plenty of long-term benefits. I mean, how much money have you saved since you quit buying cigarettes?"

"Quite a bit," he admitted.

"You're not coughing as much either."

"I never said you didn't have a point on the cigarettes."

"I have a point on the truck, too."

"Yeah, I know. Between your points and Dad's points I'm not going to have any fun left in my life."

Jo laughed. She apparently thought he was joking.

"I'm serious. I can't smoke anymore because smoking is bad for me. Dad's on my ass about drinking because drinking is bad for my liver. Mom's on me about my weight and what I'm eating because she's afraid I'm gonna get pot-bellied like Dad. Not to mention that the extra weight is making my bad knee worse. Now you're on my case because of the truck."

"Oh, come on. It's not that bad." Jo gave him her first genuine smile since Addison had put in his appearance. "Everyone just wants the best for you because they love you."

"If things get any better for me, then I'm moving in with David."

"Oh Lord, you wouldn't. Your mom does have a point about your weight and your knee though."

"Watch me." Cal shot her a devilish smirk. He was only half kidding. "I could eat what I wanted. Drink what I wanted. The truck breaks down? No problem. I'd be living with my mechanic. He hunts out of the backyard too. I'd save plenty of money by not driving out to the lease."

"And you would spend hundreds more on gas driving to work every week. David lives just about on the county line."

"I figure we could carpool. His Toyota gets okay fuel mileage."

"You've been putting thought into this." Jo eyed him nervously. Worry lines were sprouting across her forehead.

"I'm almost serious." Cal leveled her with a look that was less friendly than he had meant it to be. "I'm getting tired of being nagged. I'm practically a candidate for sainthood when you compare me to Addison and David."

"Comparing you to Addison and David is like comparing a winning lottery ticket to a two-cent whore and a loaded double-barrel shotgun. You do realize that everyone thinks David is one fifth of whiskey away from blowing this whole town to hell with that sawed-off he keeps behind his driver's seat?" Jo Beth scowled at him, shaking her head in an obvious display of disapproval.

"I'm not sure I'd put it past him." Cal shrugged his shoulders. "On the bright side, no one nags David."

"No one nags David because no one cares about David enough to nag him. He'd shoot anyone who tried. David is a 23-year old alcoholic who lives alone in a smelly, roach infested, falling-down-dump of a single-wide trailer in the middle of the woods. He's not getting laid. You like getting laid."

"You're saying you wouldn't sleep with me anymore if I moved in with David?"

"I'm saying I wouldn't set foot in David's trailer if my life depended on it and so our sexual activities would be severely limited." She was only half-teasing.

"I guess that rules out turning into David. Addison's still getting laid, though."

"You're not Addison. Even if you wanted to try to be like Addison, you would fail."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Cal tried to hide his irritation. He knew damned well he wasn't Addison.

"Addison could live in a cardboard box on the side of Main Street and not bathe or use deodorant for a week and half the girls in town would still sleep with him."

"You're probably right." Cal snorted back a laugh despite his determination to act surly. "Addison's a whole different beast than the rest of us, huh?"

"Addison is a monster." Jo scowled again. "You never did tell me what he wanted tonight."

"Oh, yeah. That. You remember Kerry Longwood?"

"From school? Yes, I remember him. He was a really nice kid but kind of strange. He got picked on a lot. Mostly by David. Kerry and I were lab partners in chemistry my junior year."

"He's just moved back to Possum Creek and applied for a job as a deputy with the Sheriff's Office."

"What?" Jo's mouth dropped open and she blinked at him several times. "Kerry couldn't wait to get out of here. He used to talk non-stop about leaving for college and never coming back. He hated this town."

"According to Addison, which means we should probably take it with a grain of salt because he heard it from Ian who heard it from the Sheriff, Kerry's come back to get revenge on everyone who ever made his life miserable. He apparently wants to revolutionize the Callahan County Sheriff's department and bring it kicking-and-screaming into the 21st century."

Jo paused for a minute, considering. "Good for him," she said finally.

Cal stared at her as if she had just taken the Lord's name in vain.

"What?" she asked. "Someone needs to do something about it. I mean, we practically have two Sheriff's Departments. People who are on good terms with the Sheriff never get into any trouble, regardless of what they do. People who disagree with him get hit with $400 tickets for going two miles an hour above the speed limit."

"That's not true."

"Really?" She shook her head at him disbelievingly. "When was the last time you got a ticket?"

"I haven't-. What does that have to do with anything?"

"Never, right?"

"Well, no. But."

"But nothing. You drive like you're trying to qualify for a NASCAR race. You just did a burn out in the middle of Main Street, and I've seen you race David clear through town going _in excess_ of 90 mph. Yet, you've never gotten a single ticket. Haven't you ever wondered why that was?"

"Probably because I've gotten lucky and haven't been caught yet."

"The only reason you haven't been caught is because Frank Chasson doesn't want to catch you. You're Joshua Calvin Walker, son of Jerry Walker. Your Pappy donates very very heavily to the Sheriff's re-election campaign. It also doesn't hurt that you are one of Addison's best friends."

"Addison doesn't have anything to do with it."

"You can't really believe that?" Jo sighed exasperatedly. "Chances are high that if you're doing something wrong then Addison is with you. If Frank busted you then he would have to bust his own nephew as well. That's not going to happen because Addison's mother isn't going to tolerate her baby brother the Sheriff making trouble for her precious little boy."

Cal had never thought about it that way. He didn't really appreciate the knowledge either. "If Kerry applies for that job then Frank's not going to be able to hire Ian because Kerry's better qualified."

"Once again, so what?" Jo held out her hands in a shrug.

"What do you mean, so what? You like Ian."

"Sure, I like Ian. He's a nice guy. He also can't spell to save his life. He had to take his police training class three times before he passed. Frank might as well be hiring Katie. Katie is the one who does all of Ian's thinking for him. You know that as well as I do. Ian is getting hired for that deputy position for the same reason Addison got hired on as Game Warden. Frank Chasson is handing out favors."

"Ian and Addison are both qualified for the jobs."

"Barely. The only reason either one of them went to Callahan Community and took the classes was because Frank had promised them jobs before they enrolled. Don't bother trying to justify that one, Cal. You know it's the truth as well as I do. Hell, Addison will tell anyone who asks that he's the Game Warden because his uncle asked him if he wanted to be."

"You think Kerry should get the job over Ian?"

"I think that Kerry's a smart guy. He probably has excellent qualifications for the job. I think he deserves to have his hard work acknowledged. You know what it's like to run a business. Why would you be opposed to hiring the most qualified candidate for a job?"

Cal frowned but didn't reply as Jo kept talking in an increasingly agitated tone.

"I've never gotten a job because of a favor. When I applied at the bank they hired me because I had a great GPA and my work references were stellar. They called Mrs. Robertson for a reference. She told them I never missed work and always did more than she asked me to. It was the truth. I busted my butt while everyone else was out partying on boats and in the woods, but you know what? Never calling in paid off. It's still paying off. I've been promoted twice since I was hired. You know why?"

"You're a hard worker."

"I always go the extra mile, Cal. Mary Jean had to have back surgery last month. Guess who cleaned the bathrooms while she was gone? Not only do I do the things other people don't want to do, I do them with a smile on my face. It may be a fake smile, but people can't tell. No one has ever given me a job because of my last name."

He turned and glared at her. The last comment had stung. "Are you trying to tell me something?"

She blinked in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"Everyone in town knows that the only reason I have my job is because of my last name."

Jo sank back against the seat of the truck, the fire and passion going out of her in an instant. "I wasn't talking about you."

"You might as well have been. It's not exactly a secret I work for my Pappy."

"It's a family business. You're going to inherit it one day. That's different," she backpedaled. "You have to know how it works."

"It's a handout. Just like everything else in my life. I get paid 50K a year to work in a hardware store but only because my last name is on the sign. You just said the cops don't pull me over because of my last name. If you really want to think about it, there isn't much in my life that isn't a direct result of being Joshua Walker's grandson."

"Cal, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way."

"Like you said a minute ago, can't ignore the truth." He hit the brakes harder than necessary as he pulled the Chevy into the driveway of her parents meticulously landscaped and maintained double-wide. Gravel went flying in all directions.

"Cal." She put her hand on his arm. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. You know that."

"I know. It's just-never mind. Can we watch the movie tomorrow?"

Jo stared at him as if she had been slapped. "You don't want to come in now? I said I'm sorry."

"It's not that." He lied even though they both knew the truth. "I'm just not in a great mood, okay? I need to go cool down for a little while."

"Mom's probably baked you a double-chocolate cake."

"Your mom's baking is going to have me so fat I'm going to have trade in this truck for a bus if she doesn't quit soon."

"She believes the way to the heart is through the stomach," Jo shrugged, clearly unhappy that he wasn't cutting off the motor or making any move to get out of the truck. "I've got about 30 lbs. of brownie I could stand to lose."

"You look fine," Cal told her. "I'll give you a call tomorrow afternoon, okay?"

"You working in the morning?" she asked.

"No. I'm supposed to be going over to David's," Cal admitted. "I need to change out my brake pads."

"Oh. Well..." She trailed off, frowning. "We'll watch the movie tomorrow?"

"If that's what you want to do." He hoped she'd change her mind on the movie.

"I do want to watch the movie. With you." Jo offered him a slightly shaky smile. "I really didn't mean-."

"It's fine. Don't worry about it. Sometimes the truth stings, okay? Doesn't necessarily mean it's not something I could stand to hear. I'll call you when I get done at David's."

"Okay. I love you. See you tomorrow." She reluctantly closed the truck's door with a frown that lasted long after his truck had backed out of the driveway and driven out of sight.

### Chapter 8

The bottle landed back on the particle board coffee table with a hollow thud. The few swallows of amber liquid left in the bottom swished against the sides. David Breedlove grimaced and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. An excitable big-breasted blonde on television was chattering mindlessly about extreme weight-loss, but David wasn't paying any attention to her. His eyes were fixed on the dark paneled wall in front of him as he listened to the sound of Addison's truck coming down his rough dirt driveway. His feet, still encased in his work boots, were kicked up on the ancient, torn sofa. He was considering taking them off when Addison shoved the front door open. He unceremoniously dumped a plastic bag full of to-go boxes on to the coffee table and knocked the almost empty whiskey bottle onto the floor.

"What the hell happened to you?" David studied his friend's furious expression and mud-caked, dripping wet uniform.

"Fucking poachers." Addy had slimy brown mud all over his game warden's uniform. Mud was caked on his boots and smeared across his jaw. "Same bullshit as before. Bright, multicolored lights shining out in the middle of nowhere a long ways from any trail a truck will fit on. This time I found dirt bike tracks."

"Who do we know who has a dirt bike?" David sniffed at the food Addison had brought in with him. It had been a long time since the stale peanut butter crackers David had crammed down his throat for lunch between Julie Adkins metal-on-metal brake pads and Grover Shallowman's clogged catalytic converter.

"I was kind of hoping you would be able to tell me that." Addison kicked off his boots next to the door, then proceeded to strip out of his socks, pants, shirt and undershirt. "I'm gonna go take a shower."

"Good luck finding a towel. The washer died last week. I haven't gotten around to fixing it." David opened one of the boxes. There was a fat cheeseburger with all the fixings and a double-size order of french fries in it. His stomach let out a loud growl to remind him that he couldn't remember the last time he'd actually sat down and eaten a meal. "You planning on eating this?"

Addison paused in the hallway half-way to the shower. "Granny Pearl had fried chicken, okra, corn on the cob and biscuits sitting on the porch waiting on me when I swung by my place earlier. You can have it."

"Thanks. I'll pay you back for it. You didn't happen to bring any beer with you, did you?"

"No beer, though I sure as shit could use one. Don't worry about the food. It was free," he called over his shoulder as he went into the bathroom.

"That explains why there's a phone number on the dessert box." David eyed the cheesecake warily before tearing into the burger with a vengeance. Addison turned on the shower and after a minute the old pipes in the trailer groaned and the water came on.

Thirty minutes later Addison was seated on the floor in the hallway wearing a pair of David's work jeans. He had David's smallest tool box open on the cracked linoleum next to him and the washing machine's internal guts in his lap. "You're a lazy bastard, you know that?"

David finished dipping the last of the fries in ketchup and set to work on the cheesecake. David was pleased that Addison's latest conquest had remembered to include an individually wrapped plastic fork. "How do you figure?"

"You repair things for a living, but I'm the one who always gets stuck fixing the shit in your house."

"I fix cars for a living." David stretched out across the couch. "Not washing machines. Not mobile homes. Don't try to blame me for making you fix the son-of-a-bitch either. We both know only reason you're working on that motherfucker is because you want to use it."

"I'm on call and my uniform is covered in mud. I had to dry off with a t-shirt after my shower. Not to mention your jeans are about 4 inches too short on me and won't fucking button at the waist because you're a scrawny, starved bastard who doesn't eat because you're too lazy to buy groceries or microwave anything. Yeah, it would be nice if the washing machine would work."

"You don't live here. You sure as shit don't pay rent. It's not my job to supply you with working appliances. You have your own place."

"I don't have my own washer. Or a clean uniform at the moment. Granny Pearl does my laundry, and I've been forgetting to put it in the hamper to bring it to her," Addison admitted with a shrug. "If I try to wake her up now she's likely to beat me over the head with that damned baseball bat she keeps next to the back door."

"I wouldn't blame her. You're a lazy bastard. You're damned near 30 and your Granny is still doing your laundry?" David eyed Addison for a moment then dangled the cheesecake box in the air. "You want this number?"

Addison shook his head no. "She looked like she was about 14. I swear to God they just keep getting younger and younger."

"Either that or you're just getting old." David crushed the Styrofoam box in one hand and shoved it back into the plastic bag to join the now empty burger-and-fry box. "Ian came by earlier."

"Was he still panicking?" Addison gave something inside the washer a hard yank and cursing when it refused to budge.

"He offered to confess to killing Casey." David got up and walked over to the washer. He leaned against it while Addison occupied himself trying to yank whatever component had frozen up inside of it loose.

"Oh Jesus Fucking Christ." Addison looked up at him while holding a can of WD-40 in one hand. "Did you explain to him why that's the stupidest idea he's ever had in his miserable life?"

"More or less." David kicked the side of the washer. "I reminded him that you can't have a crime unless you have a body. Kerry is never going to be able to find that body."

"Ian doesn't know where the body is, does he?" Addy gave the washer's innards another yank and this time something turned.

"No. Thank God. For that matter neither do I." David put his hands on his narrow hips and surveyed the damaged belt Addison had just yanked free from the pulleys. "I have another one of those somewhere."

"Find it."

"I think it's actually in that cabinet above you." David gestured at the cabinet above the dryer. He stretched across the dead washing machine and opened the cabinet door to reveal an ancient bottle of bleach, a handful of old rags, a mummified mouse and a spare washing machine belt that was still in its package. He handed the belt to Addison and briefly considered cleaning out the cabinet. He took another look at the dead rodent and closed the cabinet door. Mummified mice were a task better left for another day. One with more whiskey. Or when the trailer finally burned down. Whichever happened first.

"Crybaby Kerry Returns. It sounds like a bad B-rated movie. Nerd comes back to his hometown to seek revenge on the people who threw him onto the football field naked during the homecoming game."

"Naked?" Addison's head was mostly concealed by the washer as he maneuvered the belt into position and started putting the washing machine back together.

"Josh Rikerson and some of his buddies on the football team thought it would be funny. They stripped him down and launched him out of the locker room butt-ass nekkid."

"Where was I?" Addison asked.

"Serving Uncle Sam. It happened a couple months before your accident." David shook his head for a minute. "I still haven't figured out how you managed to break both your legs on a loading dock with a fork lift."

"I wasn't exactly sober. I'm lucky I didn't get a dishonorable discharge." Addison finished with the washer and turned it on. The machine was once again working the way it was supposed to. He walked over to the door and picked up his uniform, carrying it to the washer. Before he dropped his clothes into the machine he fished a little black velvet box out of his pocket and threw it to David, who caught it out of reflex.

"Awww. How sweet. You're bringing me the prizes out of your Cracker Jack boxes now?" He smirked as he studied the little box.

"Open it." Addison dropped his uniform into the washer and dumped a liberal squirt of cheap body wash in on top of it. David didn't have any laundry detergent. Or dish soap. Or any soap that wasn't GoJo or in bar form. So much for dry clean only.

David opened the box and revealed a very shiny diamond ring.

"Addison, you really shouldn't have." David looked up at Addy and fluttered his eyelashes at him. He pasted on his best wise-ass grin as he stared down at the diamond ring. "You're my friend and all, but I really don't feel the same way about you as you do about me."

"I took that out of Cal's glove box." Addison slammed the washer's lid closed and ignored the gay innuendos. "He bought it for that godawful Jo Beth."

"Has he lost his mind?" David stared down at the ring in his hand. "How pissed off is he going to be when he figures out you took it?"

"He knows I took it. I told him I was going to hang on to it until he got his head screwed back on straight, but then it occurred to me that I'll be in a world of shit if any of the girls I hang around with find a diamond ring in my truck."

"Rumor gets out that you're driving around with an engagement ring then all 15 of your girlfriends are going to start expecting commitment from you," David said with a smirk as Addison turned to glare at him.

"Which is why I'm giving it to you for safe keeping."

"Where the hell am I supposed to keep it?" He glared down at the offending object, thoroughly irritated now that he knew it would be staying and hadn't come out of a Cracker Jack box after all.

Addison's radio crackled loudly before he could come up with a good answer to the question.

"Now what?" Addison snapped into the speaker. The night dispatcher informed him that everyone's favorite local nut-job, Amelia Baxter, had a raccoon stuck in one of the floor vents on her trailer.

David snorted back a laugh. Addison gave him the finger as he turned off the transmitter and glared at the washer. His uniform had just barely made it into the spin cycle.

"I fucking hate being on-call," Addison snarled. "You got a shirt and some spare boots I can borrow?"

David rolled his eyes and jerked his thumb towards the bedroom. He held up the diamond ring in the light. "Help yourself. How can I refuse after a gift like this?"

### Chapter 9

Gracie had no idea how long she sat in the passenger seat of the BMW and watched the blood drip out of the hole she'd blown in Brett's face. Individual drops of blood kept running down the steering wheel of the car and dripping onto his khaki pants. A pool of blood was forming on the driver's seat itself. The blood was the same bright red color as the ruby hat pins Granny Pearl liked to wear to church on Sunday mornings.

Gracie was pretty damned certain that Brett was dead. The tiny silver gun Addison had given her the day he'd dropped her off at State University was still sitting in her lap. It was no bigger than the palm of her hand and she hadn't been supposed to have it on campus. He'd insisted that she keep it. He'd been worried she might need it.

Gracie had never planned on shooting the little gun. But she'd put it in a make-up bag at the bottom of her purse tonight, just in case.

She hadn't intended to kill Brett. She just hadn't had a choice.

She couldn't find her cell phone to call for help. It was somewhere on the floorboards of the car along with all the other contents of her purse.

Brett's phone continued to periodically chirp and chime from the depths of his pockets. Gracie tried to force herself to get it out of his pants and call 911, but burning hot bile filled her mouth anytime she worked up the nerve to touch his clammy skin.

She was still trapped in the BMW. It was impossible to unlock the doors or open the windows without using the controls on the driver's side door panel. The buttons were underneath Brett's body.

Gracie kept trying to gather her thoughts enough to paint a coherent picture of what had happened. One minute he had been trying to force himself on her. The next minute she'd had the gun in her hand. The minute after that, he'd died.

She wondered if anyone would believe her when she told them that Governor Mitchell Parker's nephew had tried to rape her. She wondered if they would believe her when she told them that she had not meant to kill him. She had only been trying to get away from him. She hadn't wanted hurt him.

Gracie fought to keep the panic from overwhelming her. She didn't know what she was going to do. Brett was dead. Eventually someone was going to drive by and get curious about the fancy car sitting on the side of the road. She had no idea how to explain why she was sitting in a brand new BMW with a corpse.

Gracie forced the bile back down her throat as she reached down to the floorboards and felt around for her phone. After an agonizing couple of minutes, she found it directly next to the passenger's side door. She should call an ambulance. Maybe there was still something that could be done for Brett. She stared at his cold, glassy expression and the blood dripping out of the hole where his nose had used to be. She had never seen anyone die before but it didn't take much imagination to see that Brett was beyond saving.

Gracie couldn't come to terms with the idea of herself as a murderer. The logical side of her brain told her that she had no proof Brett had tried to rape her. Brett had grabbed at her plenty, but he had never hit her. She was the one who had become violent first. She'd pulled the trigger without ever giving him the chance to do more than squeeze her arms.

Gracie had absolutely no proof that he had attacked her other than her torn shirt. In fact, the evidence would make it look like she had attacked him. Gracie was horrified by the thought that she might have broken his ribs or punctured something internal when she'd kicked him.

She knew it was past time to call the cops. An innocent girl would have called the cops right away. An innocent girl would have performed CPR on him and called an ambulance when blood had started coming out of his mouth. Gracie wasn't innocent. She hadn't tried to save him. She had been sitting in a car with a corpse for at least 20 minutes, praying that she was hallucinating. Praying that this was a nightmare.

Drip. Drip. The blood kept coming out of Brett's face and landing on his khakis. His arm was bent at an unnatural angle against the center console. If he had been faking dead he would have moved by now. No one would hold their arm like that for more than a couple of minutes.

Gracie tried to force her brain to work. She had to take action. She had to do something. She should have tried to save Brett. Now it was too late. Brett was past saving.

The police were going to think she had meant to kill him. She never called for help. She just sat there in the passenger seat and watched him die. It wasn't going to look good on her part.

Gracie was going to jail. Manslaughter, at the very least, because she hadn't tried to save Brett. Her life was over just four months after her eighteenth birthday. She had no one here to protect her. Addison had always protected Gracie. He'd taken the blame for more of her mistakes than she cared to admit. He wasn't going to be able to save her this time. Her big brother was back home in Possum Creek and she was on her own with the body of a man she'd shot to death.

An old rumor came unbidden to the front of her mind. One of Gracie's middle school classmates had gone missing in the network of trails and hunting roads that ran back behind David's house. Some folks thought that David had killed her and disposed of her body in the woods. Gracie had asked Addison about Casey once. Addison had told her that there was no body and that no body equaled no crime in the eyes of the law.

"No body means no crime," was all her big brother would say about Casey.

Gracie took a deep breath and forced herself to look at Brett's body again. He was definitely dead. He wasn't breathing. He wasn't moving.

She squeezed the phone in her hand so tightly she nearly cracked the plastic casing. Surely it wouldn't matter if she called Addison before she called 911. Not when Brett was already dead. Gracie clutched the cell phone with trembling fingers as she opened her recent calls and selected her big brother's number from the top of the list. Addison would be able to tell her what to do. Addison always knew what to do.

### Chapter 10

The only thing separating Addison from a potentially nasty case of rabies was the flimsy, rusting grate of the floor vent in Amelia Baxter's trailer. The stink of wild animal piss was strong enough to tell him the massively fat critter hadn't just wandered into the ducts and gotten stuck. It had been living in there, and now it was apparently too fat to get back out the way it came in. Addison hesitantly poked the grate with the toe of one of David's boots. He was rewarded with a snarling hiss and the rattle of metal as the creature lunged at him. The floor was soft between his feet and sunk menacingly as he stepped back away from the grate to consider his options.

"Are you sure you're really a police officer?" Amelia's nasally voice grated on his nerves as he contemplated the odds of getting his face ripped off while trying to remove the raccoon from the floor.

Amelia was in her late thirties and almost fat enough to be in the same predicament as the coon in regards to the trailer's front door. She was standing behind him watching his every move as she gnawed her way through a bag of store-bought powdered sugar donuts. Powdered sugar was crumbling down her massive jowls and down the front of her worn, tropical print house dress. The house dress was missing several buttons and Addy had already been granted a view of her massive, drooping breasts and size XXXL granny panties.

"He's not a cop. He's the game warden." Jo Beth was leaning against the doorway of the trailer with a look of total disgust on her face. Addison wasn't sure if her expression was for him, Amelia, the food coated, soggy rotting floor of the trailer, or the raccoon.

"Don't get smart with me, little missy. I'm just trying to protect my virtue. If he's a cop, why doesn't he have a uniform on?" Amelia sneered at Jo with apparent distaste. It was fifteen minutes after midnight and Jo still didn't have a hair out of place. Her make-up was flawless, her skin blemish free and the pink hoodie and capris she was wearing made her look warm, invitingly round and friendly, which Addy knew was just an illusion created by Victoria's Secret. Her perfume was the only thing keeping the stench of the trailer in check. He suspected she had sprayed it on extra thick before walking through the door. Jo Beth wasn't normally the kind of girl you could smell coming.

"I have no idea. Maybe he's moonlighting as a midnight mechanic." Jo raised an eyebrow at Addy and gestured at the Breedlove Automotive t-shirt he was wearing. "Why don't you have your uniform on?"

"Do you want this animal out of the house or not?" Addison was well aware of how he looked in a lime green t-shirt advertising David's shop, a pair of grease stained work jeans that fit him like too tight capris and old, cracked Justin roping boots that were two sizes too big.

Jo abruptly shut her mouth, clearly deciding to refrain from any further comments until he had removed the potentially rabid coon. Addison turned and walked back outside while muttering obscenities. Jo Beth followed him all the way to his truck.

"Tell me you aren't drunk." Her arms crossed over her ample breasts as she leaned against the side of Addison's county-issue Ford.

"Stone cold sober, unfortunately. A double shot of whiskey might make that smell a little more bearable." Addison turned to glare at her as he pulled on a set of thick metal lined gloves he kept for handling dangerous animals.

"Remind me again why the Game Warden is in charge of residential animal control?" Jo glared at him.

"Because Uncle Frank only has $700 a year in his budget for animal control, and I drew the short straw." Addison scowled and grumbled something about it not being nearly enough extra money in his check to make it worth dealing with nights like this one. He turned to face Jo Beth. "Why are _you_ here, anyway?"

To his surprise, Jo sighed and slumped back against the side of the truck. She held her hands up in the air. "This is one of my step-father's rental properties. That horrible woman is a tenant. One I'm about to do my darnedest to have evicted as soon as possible."

"Nice." Addison pulled a long metal pole with a noose on the end of it out of one of the toolboxes that lined the bed of the truck. "That coon's been in that vent for weeks. If I had to guess, I'd say she's been feeding it. Want to explain to me why it became an emergency at 11:45 tonight?"

"She called the house at around ten. She said there was a raccoon in the trailer and that it had bit her when she was trying to feed it a fried baloney sandwich. Up until the coon bit her, she apparently considered it some sort of demented pet. She demanded Matt come do something about it. Of course, he just finished chemo and isn't in any shape to be driving. I said I would come see what the problem was. Amelia's a complainer. She's always breaking something and then calling and demanding it be fixed. She's destroyed that trailer. The only reason we haven't evicted her yet is because Matt has been so sick it just kind of fell on the back burner. Anyway, I came out here and saw what was going on. She told me she was going to sue us if I didn't do something about it tonight. Matt doesn't need that kind of garbage to worry about right now. I tried to call your cell but you didn't answer it, so I called dispatch."

"Ah crap. I think I left my damned phone at David's. Either that or I dropped it in the mud while I was chasing poachers from one end of Lou Kramer's pasture to the other." Addison checked the mechanism on the pole. It had been awhile since he'd used it. "Why didn't Cal come out here with you? I could have used the help. Hell, he could have done this shit himself. He was the one who used to catch varmints all the time when we were kids."

"Cal," Jo put extra emphasis on the name, "ditched me immediately after dinner."

Addison stopped what he was doing and blinked at Jo in surprise. "What?"

"He was pissed off when he got back in the truck. I screwed up and said something stupid without thinking. He got mad at me and told me he would see me tomorrow."

Addison opened his mouth to tell her that he hoped the fight was going to be permanent when a loud scream echoed from inside the trailer combined with a loud crash and the sound of splintering wood.

"Oh lord. What now?" Jo turned back towards the trailer and glared at it with a look of pure loathing as she started to head toward the door. "Could this night get any worse?"

"I don't think so." Addison was two steps behind her with the metal pole in one hand as another scream echoed out through the night air.

### Chapter 11

The first time Gracie called her brother's phone it rang six times before it went to voicemail. She hit the send button again immediately and got the same exact result. The third time she dialed his number it rang four times and a familiar but grouchy voice came on the other line.

"What do you want? It's after midnight."

Gracie nearly choked on the breath she had been holding. For a moment she was overwhelmed by panic. She needed her brother right now and Addison was definitely not who had answered the phone.

"Hello? Gracie, are you there?"

She struggled to catch her breath. She'd realized who had answered the phone when he'd said her name, but the words she needed to say seemed to be stuck to the roof of her mouth. Nothing but air would come out of her throat.

"Gracie?"

"David." Gracie's voice was thick with panic. "David, I need to talk to Addy. Now."

"Are you okay?" He sounded as if she'd woken him up.

"No." It never occurred to her to lie to him. "I need to talk to Addy. Right now."

"Are you hurt?" His voice was calm in contrast to the thick, panicked noises her own throat kept making.

"No, but please. Just let me talk to my brother."

For a moment there was only silence. David sighed. "He's not here right now, kiddo. He's on call this weekend. He forgot his phone when he got called back out again."

Gracie felt her entire world zoom out of focus. She had been counting on Addison knowing how to fix everything and now he was out of reach. There was no telling where he was or when she would be able to get a hold of him.

"Gracie?"

Three cars had already driven by. Thankfully none of them had stopped to see why the expensive BMW was on the side of the road, but eventually someone would get curious. She couldn't stay here forever waiting on Addison. She had to take action. Soon.

"Gracie!" David's harsh tone snapped her back into focus. "What the hell is going on?"

"Oh God. David. I'm in trouble. Really bad trouble. I screwed up." Gracie felt the words rush out of her mouth before she could stop them. "I'm going to jail for the rest of my life. I'm never going to see you or Addy or Cal ever again. My life is ruined."

The tears that failed to come when she watched Brett die began to rapidly spill down her cheeks. She struggled to stop them. She was afraid that if she started crying now, she might never stop.

"Whoa. Gracie. Baby. Calm down and start at the beginning." David sounded deceptively calm.

"I can't," she whispered. "I don't have time. Someone is going to find me and call the cops. I'm going to wind up in jail forever."

"What the hell did you do?"

"I couldn't help it. I mean, I guess I could have. But he wanted to rape me. I'm so sorry. I just-." She trailed off, unable to make herself say the words.

"Gracie, tell me what the fuck is going on." David's voice had a warning tone to it.

"I killed Brett." She whispered the words so softly she could barely hear herself.

"You did what?"

"I killed Brett," she repeated it louder this time. "I shot him the face with Addison's .22."

"Did you just say you killed somebody?"

Gracie nodded and then realized he couldn't see her. "Yes."

"Are the cops there?" he demanded.

"No," Gracie said. "Just me. No one knows yet. It was an accident. I didn't mean to kill him. Really."

"Who else knows about this besides you and me?"

"No one."

"I'm the only one you've called?"

She could hear the disbelief in his voice. She struggled to pull herself together enough to try to explain what had happened to David. "I wasn't calling you. I was calling Addy."

"That's not what I was trying to say. I'm asking you- wait, why are you calling Addy?"

"I thought he would know what to do," she said softly. "I thought he could help me."

"Gracie, you need to tell me what the fuck is going on." He was deadly serious. Gracie shuddered but tried to get her thoughts together. David was a logical person to turn to. She trusted him just as much as she trusted Addison and Cal. He could probably help her figure out how to get out of this mess. According to the rumors in Possum Creek, David was a murderer too.

Gracie took a deep breath and forced her sobs back down into her throat. "It was an accident. I went on a date with a guy from school and he wanted to have sex. I refused and he said he was going to rape me. He tried to force himself on me."

"So you shot him." David sounded almost amused.

"He came at me and I shot him. He's not breathing, David. His nose is just gone and he's got blood coming out of his mouth." She struggled to make her thoughts into coherent sentences.

"Where are you?"

"What?" She had expected him to ask for more details about what had happened.

"Where are you?" He repeated the question.

"At school. Off campus on some godforsaken back road. I'm not sure exactly where."

David let out a long, hissing breath. "Are you alone?"

"Yes." She choked on a sob. "Well, except for Brett. He's still in the driver's seat. His pants are all bloody now."

"Does anyone else know about this?"

"No."

"So you're completely alone? No witnesses?"

"Right."

"Why haven't you called the cops?"

"I don't know," she admitted with a frightened whimper. "I don't want to go to jail, David."

David was silent for so long Gracie had to look at the phone to make sure it was still connected.

When he spoke again the tension in his voice was thick enough to cut with a knife. "Are you absolutely, positively certain you killed this guy, Gracie? You're completely sure he's dead?"

"Yes."

"Fuck." David cursed loudly. "You said you're in a car, right?"

"Yes," she repeated.

"Come home."

"What?"

"Start driving. I'll be waiting for you when you get here."

"David, are you sure?" Gracie's voice was trembling. She wasn't sure if it was with fear or relief.

"Are you sure you're going to be arrested for murder?"

"Yes." Panic was filling her chest and threatening to squeeze the life out of her.

"Come home," he repeated. "I'll figure something out when you get here. Drive safe and don't get pulled over."

### Chapter 12

"What's it take to get some damned service around here?"

Cal twisted on his bar stool to see a burned out middle-aged woman leaning heavily on the ancient wooden bar beside him. She plunked two thick glass draft beer mugs on the counter in front of Leon.

"Money, for starters." Leon barely bothered to cast his glance in her direction. The older man had owned and run the county's nastiest biker bar for as long as Cal could remember.

The woman scowled at him. She had badly bleached blonde hair with large chunks of greasy gray showing through the dye job. Her eyes were severely bloodshot. The broken blood vessels of a lifelong alcoholic were coloring her nose and cheeks. She dug deeply into the pockets of her too tight shorts and extracted, with some difficulty, a pair of very crumpled dollar bills. She waved them at Leon's face.

"I got money," she said defiantly.

"Not near enough to pay the tab y'all have already racked up."

"Leon, I been drinking here for how many years now? All of a sudden you want to get high and mighty asking if I can pay? Tell me you ain't."

Leon yawned. "You've been drinking here for years, but I can't remember the last time you drank on your own tab. I ain't seen that feller you're with pull out as much as a quarter for the jukebox yet."

"You think we ain't got no money?" Anger flashed in her eyes.

"Be honest, I know you don't have any money, and I'm pretty damned sure your boy over there ain't nothing but a drifter. Judging by the smell of him and the layers of clothing he's got on. This ain't a homeless shelter, Sharyn. I don't hand out freebies."

"How dare you?" Sharyn's eyes narrowed in fury.

Cal watched the man she was drinking with approach the bar. He had light brown skin spotted with an assortment of liver spots, freckles, and dirt. His hair was a tangled mass that appeared to have several sticks and twigs stuck in it, hinting that it had been awhile since he had stayed a night indoors. His body odor cloaked the bar like a humid fog of sweat and cheap, stale wine. His torn coat gaped open to reveal a thin body with a massive potbelly. He looked as if he was trying to determine what the holdup was on their next round of bottom of the barrel draft.

Sharyn gestured at Leon as she turned to her companion. "He don't wanna get us no more beer. He says he don't think we kin pay for 'em."

The man tried to glare at Leon. The effect was diminished by the fact that he had a lazy eye and was so drunk he couldn't stay upright without leaning heavily on the woman. She nearly toppled over under the force of his weight combining with her own intoxication.

"It don't matter," the man finally slurred. "This jerk ain't wanting our money if he's asking if we kin pay. Let's get the hell out of here."

She blinked for a moment and then nodded, wrapping her arms around his neck. "Let's go have some fun then." She pressed herself into the man and rubbed against his body.

"I'll bet you another bottle of whiskey he doesn't have a quarter to his name," Leon said as he and Cal watched the drunken couple stumble out the door of the bar. He pulled out an already open bottle of Jack Daniels and filled a 12-ounce glass nearly to the brim. Cal watched with amusement as he tossed a splash of Coke into the glass for appearances sake before he pushed it across the counter.

Cal shrugged and stared down at the glass in front of him for a moment before closing his eyes and downing it in three long swallows. His eyes watered as the whiskey seared its way down his throat and boiled in his stomach.

Leon raised an eyebrow at him and held up the rest of the bottle of Jack. There was slightly less than half of the amber liquid left. "You just want the rest straight from the bottle?"

Cal took it by the neck with a small smile. "Make your life easier if you don't have to bother pouring it?"

"I figure if you're going to empty the glass that damned fast there ain't no sense in wasting my time putting ice and Coke in it."

"I'm just curious where the hell that guy came from?" Cal shrugged and took another swig straight from the bottle. "Last time Pappy found a bum sleeping under the store awning, he told Frank Chasson that he was gonna cut his re-election campaign funding in half next election if he didn't run 'em all out of town."

Leon laughed. "What, somebody piss on the sidewalk in front of Walker Hardware?"

"Something like that," Cal admitted with a shrug.

"Old Joshua Walker don't play around when it comes to his personal comfort." Leon poured himself a draft beer. "I'd guess that feller ain't nothing more than a drifter passing through. If Frank's campaign funding is on the line then he'd better pass through in a hurry or Frank will personally make sure he passes. He ain't gonna risk ticking off your granddaddy."

"Not too many people will." Cal wasn't just talking about Frank, and they both knew it.

He watched through the window as the pair made their way out of the bar and climbed into a battered Toyota he had seen parked outside. The truck was red, rusted out, and looked like David's truck would if it got stuck in the crusher down at the scrap metal yard.

"I just wonder what her husband's gonna say when he finds that feller in his bed?" Leon gave Cal a wicked grin. "If that happens, that feller ain't going to live long enough for Frank to have to worry about getting rid of him."

### Chapter 13

Panic kept threatening to overwhelm Gracie as the sleek BMW cut through the crisp night air. She had rolled all of the windows down despite the cold. Maybe the coppery scent of Brett's blood would start to fade if enough damp, chilly air blew through her nostrils.

She was freezing. She'd used her thin shirt to wipe Brett's blood off the steering wheel and the vomit off her mouth once she was done upchucking every greasy dining hall meal she'd eaten in the last week. She'd tossed the shirt into the back seat with Brett's still warm body. The lacy black bra she was wearing was trimmed prettily with red ribbon and offered absolutely zero protection from the damp wind. The fabric barely covered her nipples. She'd bought the matching set because she'd known Cal would like it. She was pretty sure she'd been wearing it on that miserable Saturday night eight months ago when they had gotten in to an argument they hadn't been able to get back out of. He'd dumped her that night but she'd kept the matching bra and panty set because it was the only sexy lingerie she owned that wasn't contaminated by memories of his hands on her bare, hot skin. She'd worn it tonight because she'd needed a bra that was cut low enough that the tops of the cups wouldn't stick up over the deep-v neckline of the shirt Kelsey had dressed her in.

Kelsey had pawed all the way through Gracie's underwear drawer earlier tonight. She'd mocked Gracie for her plain cotton thongs and boy-short panties. Bright colors apparently didn't make up for the lack of sex appeal. Gracie didn't trust Kelsey anywhere near enough to admit that the thought of going shopping for something sexy knowing Cal wouldn't be seeing it had been so downright depressing that Gracie still had an unused $100 Victoria's Secret Gift Card in her wallet that had been there since her birthday in July.

She shuddered. She had been unable to shake the nausea that had begun during Brett's last reckless journey into the rural neighborhood to the west of main campus. It had taken her 30 minutes to get his body out of the driver's seat and on to the back floorboards. His phone had been ringing and receiving alerts the whole time. She'd finally forced herself to get it out of his pocket and take the battery out.

She focused her attention on driving the flashy car down the dark, mostly empty two-lane highways that would take her back to the tiny southern backwater town that she'd always called home. She tensed every time a set of headlights approached, certain the cops already knew she'd killed Brett. She felt unreasonably relieved every time the other vehicle kept cruising right on by without so much as a show of brake lights.

David had said to come home. It was a good enough excuse to run like hell away from State University.

### Chapter 14

The scene that greeted Jo Beth and Addison in the trailer was unlike anything else either of them had ever witnessed before. Amelia had apparently fallen through the soggy floor next to the air conditioning duct the raccoon was stuck in. The floor had collapsed and taken out the duct with it, trapping Amelia and freeing the coon in a twist of fate Addison would have found amusing at any other time.

"Not cool," Addy whispered under his breath as he surveyed the scene. Amelia was screaming at the top of her lungs. The raccoon had apparently climbed over her on its way out of the floor. She had bloody paw prints on her shirt and cheeks. The coon was sitting in the corner of the room. It was holding what remained of the bag of donuts and hissing viciously at Addison.

"That's pretty much the understatement of the year." Jo was standing at his elbow and making no attempt to move into the room. Addison noted that her honey-brown eyes were still framed by perfectly applied eyeliner and pink eye shadow. When she licked her lips, she automatically pulled a tube of lip gloss out of her pocket and reapplied it.

"Get me out of here!" Amelia bellowed. "What are you doing just standing there? I'm gonna sue the both of you!"

"Don't suppose you have access to the county crane?" Jo pursed her lips then leaned towards Addison. "There is absolutely no way the two of us are going to be able to get her out of that floor."

Addy shook his head. "The biggest thing I have access to is David's wrecker. I reckon we could knock out a wall and try to winch her out?"

Jo almost smiled.

The raccoon, apparently having had enough of Amelia's screaming, darted towards her flailing arms. The animal scratched her hand as she let out another squeal of anger. "Do something! I'm being attacked!"

"I was really hoping that dumb son-of-a-bitch would have run off by now." Addison gestured at the raccoon and scowled. He tightened his grip on the dog catcher's pole he was holding. He had no choice but to try and go across the weakened floor to get the coon out. He turned to face Jo Beth. "Go get the ax out of the bed of my truck and bring it back here. Please."

"Ax?"

"How else are we going to get her out of that floor?"

Jo stared back at Amelia, who was failing madly and making the whole floor quake and shift. "Should I call someone? Like, back up or something?"

"Wouldn't do any good. Perkins is on duty tonight. He weighs twice what she does. He'd fall through the floor beside her and then we'd have to figure out how to get both of them out."

Jo Beth nodded and headed out the door. She left Addison to deal with the raccoon and the screaming.

He turned to Amelia as the coon hissed at her again and laid its ears back flat against its head. She responded by flinging the television remote directly at the critter. The remote hit the coon squarely in the nose, making it hiss and snarl furiously.

"That didn't help." Addison stared at the angry animal with a growing sense of dread. He wasn't exactly an ace with the pole, and he was not going to have much of a margin of error on this. He wouldn't have wanted to trade places with Amelia right now.

Addison loosened the metal wire noose on the end of the pole and attempted to move it slowly towards the coon. The coon took one look at him then growled and ran across the room. It trampled over Amelia's head in the process. She screamed again and Addison decided to make a go for coon. He missed the coon and knocked over a cheap, ugly ceramic lamp in the shape of Jesus. Amelia howled. "That was my Mother's!"

"Guess she'll have to give you another one." Addison lunged after the coon again and fell through another hole in the floor. Pain shot through his ankle and he cursed. "Fuck!"

"My mother is dead!" Amelia yowled. Addison attempted to pull his leg back out of the hole in the floor. He succeeded at getting free but he ripped a long slit through one of the legs of his jeans as a sharp nail stuck him. The coon glared at him from under a coffee table and hissed. He swiped at it with the pole, which the animal easily dodged.

Addison crouched on the edge of the hole he'd just created, muttering obscenities and glaring at the raccoon. Amelia's howling was giving him a headache. "Will you kindly shut the fuck up?"

"You can't talk to me like that! I pay your salary!" Amelia glared at him and he considered her for a moment. Her house dress was shredded across her chest, exposing one large blue-veined breast. Her curly hair was completely disheveled. She had blood running down from the areas where the coon had bitten her.

"Do you want me to get this raccoon or not?" Addison turned his attention back the raccoon. He carefully slid the pole towards the raccoon and eased the noose carefully around its neck before tightening it down. He wasn't fast enough. The raccoon grasped the pole in its paws and began climbing up the pole towards Addison. He cursed and was about to drop the whole contraption when a shot rang out and the raccoon dropped to the floor of the trailer twitching.

Amelia abruptly shut up.

"Jesus Christ." Addy turned to see Jo Beth standing in the doorway with a pink .38 caliber pistol nestled neatly in her hand. He was disconcerted to see that the gun was the exact same shade of pink as her hoodie. The ax was leaning against the doorway behind her.

"You just shot my trailer!" Amelia wailed.

"Technically, no." Jo shook her head and brushed her bangs out of her eyes. Addison watched numbly as she clicked the gun's safety back on and put it into the pocket of her cotton capri pants. "I shot my trailer. Or rather, my step-daddy's trailer."

"Nice shot," Addison said, finally recovering his wits. "You always carry that thing around with you?"

"Pretty much," Jo said with a shrug. "Never know when some creep might decide to prey on an innocent girl." She shot him a nasty look. Her implications were clear.

"I'll keep that in mind." Addison tried not to let her see him shudder slightly. The coon hadn't been an easy shot. She could probably shoot his balls off. That little talent made her a lot more dangerous than he'd previously suspected. He decided he might have to make an attempt to be nicer to her. He liked his anatomy the way God had made it. He grabbed the ax from where she'd left it resting against the door frame and headed towards the center of the room where Amelia was still trapped.

"Hold still," he told her roughly as he began hacking at the floor. Addison was trying his damnedest not to do any more damage than he needed to. A few well-placed swings later Amelia was free of the plywood floor but still down in the hole.

"What are you waiting for?" she demanded. She held both arms out to him. "Lift me up."

Addison groaned and took her hands. His back and legs were already aching from the day's abuse, not to mention his own fall through the floor. He pulled up on her as hard as he could with his muscles screaming in protest. He thought it was working as Amelia budged an inch and then two. She was almost free when she suddenly stopped trying to help and turned into dead weight with a death grip on his hands. When Amelia fell back through the floor, she took Addison with her.

For a moment he lay under the trailer, groaning as he rolled off of Amelia and into a nest of harmless but still disgusting wood spiders. Amelia moaned beside him.

"You're trying to kill me," she said accusingly and then started to cry. "You did that on purpose."

Addison blinked at her in complete disbelief. He was coughing and brushing spiders off his chest and arms.

"No, I don't think he did," Jo Beth spoke from above them. She knelt carefully near the edge of the hole and held out something long and metal in one of her hands. She lowered a step-ladder into the hole. "I saw this outside."

Addison was tempted to kiss her as Amelia clawed into his shoulder and used him as a post to hoist her massive body out from the underside of the trailer. He was having a hard time breathing. He suspected the problem had something to do with the fall, his dust allergy, and having three hundred pounds of woman pressing down on his rib cage.

Jo Beth gracefully helped Amelia onto her feet and onto more solid ground. No sooner was the ungrateful woman back on her feet than she glared at Jo. "I'm not paying you any more rent. In fact, I'm going to sue you as soon as the courthouse opens tomorrow morning."

"That's fine," Jo said calmly as Addison worked his own way out of the hole from hell. "You're not on the lease anyway. You moved in five years ago when your mother died and Matt let you stay because he's a nice guy. I'm planning on evicting you in the morning. If you sue me you should be aware that I'm going to counter-sue you for destroying the trailer." Jo gestured at the holes in the floor and then turned on her heel, picked up Addison's ax and walked neatly out the door.

Addison considered his options for half a second and then gingerly used the pole to pick up the dead raccoon and followed after her. Amelia slammed the door shut behind him.

### Chapter 15

"Either I've had way too much to drink tonight or nowhere near enough." David was sitting on the top step of the porch when Gracie got out of the BMW. The moon was bright enough that she could see the details in the tattoos that were covering his chest and arms when he stood up to greet her.

David had too many tattoos. The only thing Addison had learned in the Navy was how to work a tattoo gun. David had been content to let Addy practice his new skill on his body when he'd come back to Possum Creek. The result was a disturbing collection of artwork that displayed a lot of raw talent but rather questionable taste.

The words 'Southern Bad Ass' framed David's collarbone. Immediately underneath the writing he had a large toothy alligator with the skeleton of a confederate soldier resting against its side. The gator and the solider were surrounded by a wicked, decaying swamp full of bullfrogs and stumps. The confederate flag itself covered the flesh over his heart. When he took a drag off the cigarette he was holding, the entire image rippled like it was breathing on its own.

"Nowhere near enough. I promise you. You can't buy enough whiskey to make tonight okay." Gracie shivered as she shut the door of the BMW and walked unsteadily towards the ramshackle porch of David's single-wide trailer. She wasn't surprised to find him awake and waiting on her at quarter past three in the morning. She felt his dark, hooded green eyes burning into her as she delicately stepped over the busted rear-end that had come out of Addison's truck last year. Neither of them spoke as she picked her way barefoot through the broken glass and miscellaneous truck parts that had accumulated in the front yard over the last decade or two. He had been living alone in the trailer since high school. The place was beginning to bear a strong resemblance to a junkyard.

She turned to face him directly as she reached the porch. He was taller than her by a couple of inches. The top of her head came up to his eye level when they were both standing barefoot. He had his tanned, muscular arms crossed over his narrow chest. David was as thin as a skeleton when compared to Cal and Addison. He was strong but he didn't look it unless he had his shirt off. Gracie could see the lean muscles that cut decisive lines in his toned body. Lean corded muscle covered in endless tattoos and scars. Plenty of scars on David.

She caught sight of a particularly long, jagged scar on his rib cage and almost smiled. Rumor had it he'd gotten that scar in a knife fight with the Hells Angel who had stabbed his Dad. Rumor also had it he'd gotten it while robbing a bank in some county no one had ever heard of. A third rumor said, well, it didn't matter what the third rumor said. He'd been gutting a deer with Cal and the knife had slipped. Gracie knew because she had been sitting on these very steps when it had happened. He'd bled like a stuck pig and his olive toned skin had turned white enough to spook Cal into breaking every speed limit for 60 miles on the way to the hospital.

"Where are your clothes?" David's question brought her back to the present.

"My clothes?" Gracie was confused until she looked down at herself. Even on a nearly moonless night, the outlines of her dark nipples showed clearly through the sheer black lace of her bra. Her toes were bare except for a chipped coat of cherry colored polish. The tiny confederate rose tattoo Addison had drawn on her hip when she turned 15 was exposed to the elements. Her hair was a tangled mess from the wind.

"I wasn't wearing much to start with. Just a tank top and this skirt. I threw up on the tank top." She was almost embarrassed as she waved one trembling hand across her exposed flesh. "You know how I get when I see blood."

"You still have it?" His voice was emotionless but that was completely normal for David. David was tough. He'd never complained when he'd sliced his side open. Not one complaint even as his blood had turned the blue towel Gracie had been instructed to use to keep pressure on his open wound to a deep dark brown color. He'd barely flinched when the doctors had stitched him back together and dumped several bags of fresh blood into his veins. He'd opened the shop same as usual at 7 a.m. the next morning.

"My shirt?" She nodded and forced herself to try and stay calm. "It's in the back seat."

"I'll have to make sure to burn it." He chewed on the inside of his cheek. It was nervous habit he'd had for as long as she could remember. "You have any trouble getting down here? You didn't get pulled over or anything, did you?"

"I almost ran out of gas," she admitted with a shudder. She was fighting the urge to break down and bawl like a baby. "I thought three quarters of a tank would be enough, but the car gets really crappy gas mileage."

David snorted back a harsh laugh and shook his head at her. "That engine is meant for speed, Gracie Jayne. Most folks who can afford one of these babies aren't worried about a few bucks at the pump."

"Figures." She shrugged her shoulders and bit her lip to stop fresh tears from spilling down her cheeks. David had never had any patience for whiny, crying girls. The last thing she needed to do right now was annoy him. He had a wickedly short temper. Unlike most of the residents of Callahan County, Gracie wasn't remotely afraid of David. She had no desire to annoy him either, especially not when her entire future was in his hands.

"I came straight here. I never stopped. I was afraid the car would be too memorable."

"Especially being driven by a half-naked blonde," David commented without any hint of sarcasm. "I was starting to worry something had happened to you. You took more than three hours to get here."

"It took me a long time to get his body into the back seat," she explained with a cringe. "I didn't want to risk opening the doors of the car and having anything drop out. I didn't think I could pick him back up if he fell out either."

"That was smart." David brushed his shaggy brown hair out of his dark green eyes and scowled at the car. "Your boyfriend still in there?"

Gracie gagged slightly and gestured toward the back doors of the sedan. "Don't call him my boyfriend."

David cocked his eyebrow at her but said nothing as he walked over to the car and opened the back door. He barely recoiled when he caught sight of Brett sprawled across the backseat. If Gracie hadn't known him intimately since the tender age of three she probably wouldn't have noticed the way he flinched when he reached down to double check the corpse's pulse.

She tried and failed to suppress another shudder. "David, I'm so sorry."

He held up a hand to stop her from saying anything else. He shut the door on the BMW. "It's okay. We'll get through this."

"I can't believe this is happening. I didn't mean to kill him. I swear to God. I was just trying to stop him from raping me. I thought he'd back off and let me go when he saw the gun." She was taking her breaths in short gasps. Suddenly tonight was all too real. She didn't realize her knees had given out until David grabbed hold of her and pulled her upright against his warm chest.

"Shhh. Easy. It's okay. You're safe now." David pressed his cheek against the top of her head. Gracie dug her fingers into his skin. She held onto him for dear life.

"Oh, God. David." She buried her face in his chest. She'd never be able to erase the memories of blood dripping down Brett's face and wild panic in his eyes as he'd convulsed against the steering wheel moments after she'd shot him. She would never forget wrestling Brett's still warm body into the back seat of his own car. Throwing up all over the front of her shirt. Trying to wipe the blood off her hands with rough brown napkins she'd found in the glove box.

"Gracie, you've got to hold it together right now." David grasped her by her shoulders.

"It's not just tonight. My whole life has gone to hell. " She slipped her arms around his narrow waist and hid her face in his shoulder. His bare skin was burning hot to the touch. She would have thought he was feverish if she hadn't known the furnace effect was normal for him."Just hold me for a minute, okay?"

David said nothing as she pressed her cheek into his skin and took a deep breath. He smelled like a mixture of sweat, Addison's cigarettes, cheap soap and too much whiskey. She could feel his pulse against her skin as she closed her eyes and just listened to the steady bump-bump of blood pumping through his heart.

Gracie couldn't stop the sobs and she didn't try. Instead she let David hold her until the urge to start screaming and never stop began to fade away.

She had no idea how long she stood in his embrace and cried.

Eventually she became aware of her own nakedness and the chill of the cold fall breeze against her bare skin. Her joints felt stiff, her legs were jelly, her nose was stopped up and she was clutching David so tightly that her knuckles were turning white.

She opened her eyes back up and stared into his hooded green eyes. His expression was calm, flat and completely unreadable.

"Let's go inside." David released her and stretched his shoulders out with a loud crack as he scowled at the car. "I need you to tell me everything that happened tonight. In detail. From the beginning."

"How can you be so calm?" Gracie was mildly surprised to discover she didn't just plummet to the ground. If she had hit the dirt, she wasn't sure she ever would have gotten up again. She knew she sounded pitiful and broken but she couldn't seem to pull herself together.

"I have to be calm, Gracie. Panicking is what gets you caught."

### Chapter 16

The bright light from the Chevy's high beams started to dim as Cal crossed the highway between Leon's bar and the county line. At first he thought the fading light was a side effect of the bottle of liquor he'd just consumed in hopes of clearing his head. The alcohol hadn't done much help.

He knew he should be mad at Addison for taking the diamond ring and mocking his judgment but he really couldn't seem to work up the venom. Addy had always been tactless.

It wasn't really rational to stay angry at Jo Beth either. He didn't know why he was having such a hard time forgiving her comments about having been born with the right last name. It wasn't like he didn't already know that everything he valued in life had been handed to him by virtue of being Joshua Walker's grandson. Well, everything except Gracie.

Damn, that still stung.

Even in his current state of intoxication, he realized the truth when it slapped him in the face.

Gracie was one of the few people in Possum Creek who wasn't impressed with Cal's last name. She'd always mocked him about his family's status in the community. Teased him by calling him the Future Mayor of Possum Creek. It wasn't much of a joke. His father and his grandfather had both served terms in public office. He would likely do the same. Whether he wanted to or not.

Cal was good at being Possum Creek's Golden Boy. Not quite as golden as Addison, maybe, but damn good at playing his little role in the daily soap opera that was life in Callahan County. All Cal had to do was keep doing exactly what he had been doing his entire life, and he'd be set.

Except Gracie didn't want to be married to the Future Mayor of Possum Creek. Jo Beth probably did. Hell, Jo Beth probably wanted to _be_ the next Mayor of Possum Creek.

Addison was right. Cal didn't want to be married to Jo Beth. Matching sweater sets and minivans for the rest of his life. Filling out purchasing orders and restocking shelves until he was driven completely insane by the monotony.

Assuming Walker Hardware didn't get gobbled up by some giant corporate mega-store. Cal shook his head and sighed. April Lynne and his father assumed the business was safe from failure. Cal was a bit more pessimistic. He had seen the sales data. At the moment, Walker Hardware was holding its own. It was still in the black because it had kept the prices low enough to be competitive and opened up an online store selling hard to come by specialty items to customers across the nation. Besides, most Possum Creek residents just flat out didn't want to drive 45 minutes to pick up a P-trap or a couple of 2 x 4's to fix a broken fence. They didn't want to wait three to five business days for a $3 part they ordered online to be shipped to their door.

Times were definitely changing though. Hell, Cal had noticed his own shopping habits changing. It made more sense to drive to Canterville once a week and do all his shopping in one quick Walmart trip than it did to drive to four different mom and pop stores in Possum Creek, hoping they had whatever it was he happened to be after.

Like a new battery for his truck.

Cal cursed as the headlights went out completely and the dashboard warning lights all came on at once. It was rapidly becoming apparent that the malfunction with his truck was something a little more tangible than intoxication. There was a significant possibility his alternator was completely fried. Again.

Cal cursed under his breath as the engine cut out completely. He muscled the jacked up pick-up onto the shoulder of the road without the benefit of power steering.

Of all the damn nights for his truck to decide to act up, it had to pick the night his parents thought he was staying with Jo Beth and Jo Beth thought he was home asleep in his bed like a good church-going boyfriend ought to be.

He turned the key several times without getting anything more than a weak twitch from the engine. Dead Battery. Dead alternator. Dead meat if a cop drove up who wasn't Addison Malone or Ian McIntyre. Or Frank Chasson. Or, hell, Jo was probably right when she'd said he didn't have to worry about the cops. No one was going to arrest him for being intoxicated while broke down on the side of the road.

He considered his options as he slid out of the driver's seat of the truck, stumbling slightly. He had no idea what his blood alcohol level was but he was willing to bet one broke-ass Chevrolet he was well over the .08 legal limit.

He reached under the dashboard and popped the hood. Not that it did any good. He wasn't carrying a jump pack with him and jumper cables weren't real useful if you didn't have a running vehicle to hook them to.

He kicked the front tire in irritation. Maybe it was time to trade this bastard in on a new Z71. He pulled his cellphone out of his pocket and scanned through the contact list, debating whether there was anyone worth calling to come get him.

His folks and Jo Beth were out of the question. He wasn't in the mood for any more bitching tonight.

Addison never answered his damned phone.

David was probably passed out drunk.

On the bright side, David's place was only a couple of miles up the road from where he was standing. Cal wasn't in the best physical shape, but he figured he could manage a two-mile hike. David was going to have to come get the damn truck in the morning in order to fix it anyhow. He might as well just head to David's and deal with the truck when the sun came up.

Cal sighed, slammed the hood shut, and began walking down the dark shoulder of the deserted highway.

### Chapter 17

"Well, that was fun," Jo Beth said to Addison as he tossed the dead raccoon into the bed of his truck.

"Yeah. I love it when work makes me bleed." Addison glared down at the various cuts and scratches he had accumulated between the tussle with the raccoon and the holes in the trailer floor.

"I think your jeans have had it." She was eyeballing the rip that had created a 12-inch slit down the left leg.

"It's cool. They're David's anyway," Addison shrugged. "I'm kind of glad I wasn't wearing my uniform now. Uniform pants aren't cheap."

"Your shirt is David's too," Jo gestured at it.

"Everything I'm wearing is David's. My clothes are in his washer. I fell in the mud when I lost my phone."

"You're wearing David's underwear?" Jo blinked at him in disgust.

"Um, no. I'm actually not wearing any-."

"Stop now." She cut him off mid-sentence. "I don't want to know you're free-balling."

"Too late." Addison grinned and thumbed the slit in the pant leg at her. He pretended to show off his pale, hairy thigh. Jo rolled her eyes at him and started to head back towards her car.

"You are so gross."

Addison turned towards his own truck and frowned as he looked back down at the dead raccoon again. She might be a bitch, but Jo Beth had saved his ass tonight. "Hey, wait."

She turned around looking irritated. "What?"

"Thanks," he said.

"For what?"

He jerked his head towards the trailer. "Everything you just did."

"Oh, yeah. That." Jo Beth gave him a small smile. "No big deal. It had to be dealt with at some point."

Addison snorted and ran one hand through his hair. "Yeah, well, I owe you on this one."

"You kind of do, don't you?" Jo looked at him thoughtfully and he had a sudden feeling of impending doom.

"What?" he asked.

"Let me see the ring."

Addison's jaw nearly hit the ground. He decided to try to play dumb. "What ring?"

"The one you took out of Cal's glove box earlier." Jo Beth held out her hand. "I don't want to keep it. I'm just curious to actually see what it looks like."

"You knew about it?"

"You knew about it." She smirked at him. "Everyone in town knows about it. Not to mention Cal doesn't keep condoms in his glove box. I'm on really good birth control."

Addison stood there and blinked at her in disbelief for a few moments. "I don't have it."

"Don't lie to me." She glared at him.

"I'm not. I left it at David's for safekeeping. Figured he could put it in the gun safe or something," he shrugged. "Cal would be pissed as fuck if I lost it. Let's face it. I lose shit all the time. Like my phone, lost that earlier tonight. It's either at David's or in Lou Kramer's pasture. Couldn't tell you which. Diamonds are a lot safer with David."

"Okay, I'll buy that," Jo said. They stood in silence for a moment and studied one another.

"How pissed off are you that I took the ring?" Addison was remembering her accuracy with the little pink pistol.

Jo Beth ran her tongue across her teeth and then pulled a piece of gum out of her pocket and tucked it neatly between her lips. "Honestly, I'm kind of relieved. If you have it then it means he won't be proposing any time soon."

Addison was completely stunned for the second time in less than an hour. "You don't want to marry Cal?"

"It's not that I don't want to marry him. I love Cal, it's just-." Jo Beth shrugged and leaned back against her car. "It's just too soon."

"Too soon?" Addy was baffled. He would have sworn Jo Beth wanted nothing more than to get Cal down the aisle.

"I think he wants to propose to me to prove to himself that he's over Gracie," she admitted. "I appreciate the gesture, but I'm not getting married until I'm sure Cal loves me for who I am. I don't think he does. He just wants to believe that he does."

Addison opened his mouth and then closed it. "I don't have anything to say to that except I agree with you. Cal's never going to get over my sister."

"I really hope you're wrong. I want to marry Cal, but only if I'm 100 percent positive Cal is marrying me because he loves _me_. The last thing I want is to walk down the aisle at Possum Creek Baptist wondering if Cal's wishing I were Gracie. I deserve more than that." Jo brushed an imaginary strand of hair away from her eyes.

"I told him he could have the diamond back when he convinced me that getting married was something he truly wanted to do," Addison said.

"That's fair," Jo said. "I probably owe you for that."

"I guess we're even then." He considered her for a moment. She was leaning against the car looking preppy and prissy and giving no indication she was toting around a pink gun in her pocket. Maybe Cal was right about her after all. The gun thing was kind of hot. As if she was reading his mind, Jo Beth made her fingers into the shape of a gun and made a shooting gesture directly at his family jewels. Addison flinched. Jo grinned, got in her car and drove off into the night.

### Chapter 18

"He was probably so fucking high that he never noticed the gun." David paced back and forth from one end of the tiny living room to the other. He never had been able to think when he was standing still. A kind of nervous energy seemed to flow out of him and into the room surrounding them.

Gracie had curled into a ball on David's ancient, threadbare velveteen couch. She hadn't been able to stop shivering even though he'd turned the trailer's heater on at full blast at her request. David had gone to his bedroom and brought out his ancient camouflage comforter for her to bundle up in. It had only helped a little bit. He had also brought her the bottle of cheap moonshine he kept in his freezer "for emergencies" but she wasn't sure she'd be able to stomach the burning alcohol. The crying had left her feeling strangely numb but still vaguely nauseous. "I wasn't even aiming for his face, David. I was trying to shoot him in the chest. I don't know why I shot him in the face."

"You shot him in the face because you're a lousy shot." David paused briefly in his pacing to cast an edgy glance out the back window. He'd parked Brett's car in a secluded patch of brushy woods at the edge of the backyard. He kept checking outside as if he expected Brett's corpse to get up and drive away in the car. "You're sure he was going to rape you?"

"He was going to rape me and I think he was going to kill me afterwards. He said he was going to make sure that I would never be able to tell anyone what he did to me." She traced the rings on the surface of the warped old coffee table with her finger tip.

"Nice. He deserved to die." David paused mid-step step and cut his hooded green eyes at her. "I just wish he hadn't been the governor's nephew."

"Me too." Gracie pulled the edges of the comforter tighter around her shoulders. "This has been the worst mistake of my life."

"Dating him or killing him?" David picked up the bottle of moonshine she'd abandoned on the coffee table. He held it up in the dim light of the ceiling fan and frowned at the clear liquid.

"Both."

"I do wish you had killed someone a bit less politically connected." David sat the bottle back down on the coffee table without opening it. He rubbed his eyes with his right hand as he sat down on the coffee table. His face was only a couple of inches from Gracie's, but she kept her eyes focused on a large burned spot on the surface of the table. "You realize they're going to look for him, right?"

"I know." Gracie wished she could close her eyes and wake up to discover this had all been a bad dream.

"His family has money. If they care about him at all then they're going to look for him when they realize he's gone. The Parkers have enough political power to make the cops look long and hard for their missing kid."

Gracie fought to swallow the growing lump in her throat. "I really screwed up, didn't I?"

"Not if he was really going to rape you and kill you." David reached out and took her hand in his. He pulled her fingers into his lap. "Look at me, Gracie."

She blinked away tears as she forced herself to meet his eyes. "I screwed up, David. Just say it."

"You did what you felt you had to do." He held up his free hand when she started to turn away from him. "Hear me out, kid. Mitchell Parker got caught in bed with a congressman's wife last year. He's already sitting in some pretty hot water when it comes to this next election."

"So?" Gracie felt hot tears running down her cheeks. She clung to David's hand as if she were drowning and he was her last lifeline.

"The Parkers can't afford another scandal. There was a backpack full of illegal prescription drugs in the backseat of that car. I assume that means your boy was dealing as well as using." David raised one eyebrow at her.

She nodded and he continued.

"If you had called the cops, they would have found you in a car with the governor's dead nephew and a back pack full of illegal drugs."

"The drugs were Brett's. I didn't have anything to do with them. I didn't know he had them until after-."

"Why would they believe you?" David cut her off.

"What?"

"Why should the cops believe you?" His eyes were deceptively calm as he asked a question that sent Gracie's stomach plummeting down into her bowels.

"It's the truth."

David laughed. "No one cares about the truth, Gracie. Not once the damage is already done. Your story is that he was on drugs when he tried to rape you, and you accidentally killed him when you fought back. The Parkers' story is going to be that a girl on drugs murdered their son. I bet they'll say you killed him so you could steal his money."

"What money?"

"This money." David pulled a thick wad of cash out of his pocket and spread it out across the scarred wooden table. "Your boy was carrying around a little over $8,000. Probably drug money. Not that we could prove it. Drug money and trust fund money look just the same after the initial transaction is done."

Gracie blinked at him in absolute horror. "You really think they would pin the drugs on me?"

"You think I'm just trying to scare you?"

"No," Gracie shook her head vehemently. "You wouldn't do that."

"Blaming you for the drugs and the murder would clear the Parkers of any wrong doing. It would turn them into the victims of a crime rather than the family of a drugged-out loser who likes to force himself on girls. A rape scandal would be bad, bad news for Mitchell Parker right now."

"Oh God. I'm in real trouble, aren't I?" Gracie buried her face in her hands. "I'm going to be in prison forever."

"You're not going to prison, Gracie." David gently pried her hands away from her face. "Cal's supposed to be here first thing in the morning to change out the brake pads on the Chevy. We're going to take that damned BMW apart one piece at a time until its nothing but sheet metal and screws. No one will ever find that car."

"Cal?" Raw panic burst to life in Gracie's heart when she thought about Cal seeing the horrible thing she had done. "No. Please, no. You can't get Cal involved in this. You can't tell Cal what I did. He'll go ballistic."

"I have to, Gracie. Getting rid of that car is going to be a two-man job."

"I can help you." Gracie took a deep breath and tried to steel her nerves. It wasn't working. A fresh batch of tears escaped from her eyes. "We can handle it. Please. Don't tell Cal."

"I don't have a choice. You don't need to be involved. You've always been a shitty liar. The less you know about what we do, the better it's going to be in the long run."

"I can do this. I promise." Tears were running freely down her cheeks, but she made no effort to wipe them away.

"You can't drive the wrecker. You can't lift 100 pounds of scrap metal. I don't trust you with a cutting torch." David shook his head at her. "This isn't negotiable. I can get rid of your boy and his car, but I can't do it alone. I need Cal."

"Call Addison. Get Addy to help you."

"I'm not doing that to him," David shook his head. "Addison is a cop, Gracie."

"He'd do it. He wouldn't turn me in."

"You're right. He wouldn't." David held out his arms in a wide shrug. "What do you think would happen to Addison if something goes wrong and we get caught?"

"I don't know," Gracie admitted. She couldn't get past the thought of how angry Cal was going to be.

"It wouldn't be pretty. Cops are held to a higher standard than the rest of us. Cops are expected to know the law. He wouldn't be able to play dumb the way I can. He'd go to prison for a long fucking time." David scowled and crossed his arms over his chest. "You don't get a choice in this. Addison loves you. He'd go to prison for you if he thought it would save you. I know he would. I'd do the same. So would Cal, though you don't want anything to do with him anymore. He still loves you, Gracie. He'll help us."

"He's going to hate me," Gracie was bawling now. The sobs came so hard and fast that they made her chest ache. David pulled her into his arms and held her tightly against his chest. She wrapped her arms around his neck without thinking about it. She buried her face in his chest and let the sobs flow for the second time in less than two hours. "You don't understand. I miss Cal. I miss Cal so badly that sometimes I feel like I'm just going to die of a broken heart. I miss him so badly that it hurts to breathe. I'm failing half of my classes because I spend all my time staring out the windows hoping I'll see his Chevy pull up outside. I keep waiting for him to show up and save me from myself, but he never does. If he finds out what happened tonight, he never will. He's not going to want to marry a murderer. Cal's squeaky clean, David. He's a goody-goody. He's not going to love me if he knows I shot someone in the face."

"Cal's my best friend." David spoke calmly and slowly. "Cal is not half as pure as you think he is. He's going to be pissed off, but he is not going to hate you. I know him better than that."

"You promise?" Gracie blinked up at him through her tears.

"Everything's going to be okay." He almost smiled at her as he used his thumb to wipe the tears off of her cheek and pushed several strands of long blonde hair away from her eyes. "I promise."

He was still holding her against his chest when the front door of the trailer crashed open and Cal came stumbling into the room.

### Chapter 19

"Damn it's hot in here." Cal kicked an empty whiskey bottle and Addison's uniform boots out of the doorway. He grabbed onto the cracked wooden door frame to keep from falling as he made his way into the dimly lit living room of David's trailer. The pain in the knee he'd broken playing high school football had gone from throbbing to burning during the last mile or so of his unplanned early morning hike.

The combination of pain and alcohol consumption had slowed his perceptions enough that it took him a minute to process that David was standing in the middle of the burning hot living room with his arms wrapped tightly around the waist of a more or less naked girl with long sexy legs. David's jaw was hanging open, and the expression in his eyes made him look like a deer caught in the headlights of a freightliner.

"Oh shit, man. I'm sorry." Cal struggled to comprehend the sight in front of him. "I didn't know you had anyone here."

David released his grip on the girl and jumped away from her so quickly she stumbled backwards. Her shin hit the coffee table and she spun around. She would have fallen if Cal hadn't caught her arm and pulled her upright.

Which brought him eye-to-eye with a pair of very familiar turquoise-colored irises. His heart damn near stopped beating in his chest. Cal wondered if he was hallucinating. He had to be hallucinating. He must have passed out drunk in his truck on the side of the road, and now he was imagining being at David's.

He released his steadying grip on Gracie's arms. Her eyes were huge as she blinked at him through wet, dark eyelashes. She wasn't wearing a shirt. Her bra was black, lacy and see-through with red ribbon trim. The Confederate rose tattoo on her hip was exposed by her low riding skirt. Damn near all of her creamy, soft skin was bare. Her cheeks were flushed.

God it was hot in here.

"Cal, it's not what you think." David's voice cut through his intoxicated denials like a knife.

Cal was sober in an instant. Gracie was damn near naked in the middle of David's living room. He'd just walked in on the only girl he'd ever really loved and his best friend. Neither of them had on half the clothes they should have.

The heat in the trailer made him feel like he was suffocating.

Gracie reached for his arm. He felt the tips of her fingers brush against his skin.

"We need to talk."

He watched her mouth move but he didn't hear most of what she was saying. His brain was filling in the blanks on its own. Not that there were very many options for explaining why your best friend and your ex-girlfriend were playing two man strip poker in the middle of the night.

David might as well have sucker punched him in the stomach. It would have hurt less.

Gracie was holding onto his arm. He brushed her off with a rough shrug. "There's nothing to talk about," he said flatly as he turned to walk back out of the trailer before he completely lost control. The blood was rushing so fast in his head he could literally feel it boiling in his veins.

David took two steps and caught him by the shoulder. "Cal, I'm serious. This isn't what you-."

Cal didn't give him time to finish the sentence. He snatched hold of David by the throat and threw him through the open doorway of the trailer and out onto the porch. The ancient wooden railing buckled when his weight hit it. David went crashing down into the yard and landed on his back in the middle of a pile of rotting wood.

He was on his feet before Cal made it to the bottom of the stairs.

"Don't be stupid." David stepped directly into Cal's path.

Cal reacted without thinking. His anger and frustration mixed with the liquor and boiled over. He swung his fist directly into David's face. He heard his best friend's nose break with a loud, sickening crunch. Blood spurted out of David's nose as he kicked Cal's legs out from under him and they both toppled to the ground, punches flying.

Even as the anger took over, Cal could dimly hear Gracie pleading with them to stop. He was aware of the coppery taste of blood in his mouth when David connected a solid hit on his jaw and rattled his teeth.

He just didn't care.

He grabbed David's shoulder and threw him to the ground again. This time he felt a surge of white hot pain shoot out of his bad knee as he overbalanced and landed with all his weight on the barely functional joint. The pain only served to feed his fury and hurt as he landed another punch directly into David's chest.

David returned the favor by kicking him in the stomach with a size 13 work boot and they rolled across the yard again in a flurry of kicks, punches and swearing.

Cal finally grabbed a hold of David by the throat. He slammed him backwards into the side of the wrecker and drew his fist back, preparing to land another blow when Gracie threw herself in between his fist and David's chest.

Cal pulled his punch at the last second, slamming his fist into the steel side of the truck. A large dent blossomed in the metal.

"Goddamn it, Gracie. Get out of the way."

"No." She had tears flowing freely down her cheeks as she pressed her back against David's bare chest. "Please stop. Please. Don't be like this. You have to understand."

"I don't want to understand." Cal spit blood into the dirt at his feet. He leveled a cold and glare in David's direction. It figured Gracie would protect him. It just fucking figured that he hadn't been good enough to keep her but that she'd come back from college for David.

"Are you drunk?" David demanded with a snarl. He had gotten to his feet behind Gracie. Blood was running from his shattered nose like water from a broken faucet. He made an irritated attempt to wipe the blood away from his face, scowling in disgust as it smeared across his arm.

"Not anymore. Seeing you with _her_ sobered me up." Cal jerked his head at Gracie. He yanked the polo shirt off of his own back and thrust it into her hands. "Put some clothes on, will you?"

Gracie swallowed visibly as she took the shirt in trembling hands. It fit her like a dress when she pulled it over her slender frame. "Cal, I'm sorry."

"I don't want to hear it," he glared at David.

"If you'd just fucking listen to what I'm trying to tell you." David ignored the blood that was now running most of the way down his chest and landing in fat drops in the dirt at his feet. His eyes flashed dangerously in the dim moonlight, daring Cal to swing on him again.

Cal met his stare as they sized one another up for another round. Cal flexed his shoulders lightly and took a step towards David. He wanted him to swing again. "Don't test me right now, Breedlove. I'll kill you."

"It's not worth it." David shook his head abruptly and took a step back. It was the first time Cal had ever seen him turn down a fight.

"Should have thought about that a little sooner," Cal snapped. He was trying in vain to keep the anger from being replaced with a bone deep weariness and hurt. He felt vaguely sick as he took in the blood that was running down David's face and chest. There was fear in Gracie's red rimmed eyes when she looked at him. He turned away from her abruptly. He doubted he'd ever be able to look at her the same way again.

"Go inside," David told Gracie. She opened her mouth and looked between him and Cal as if she had something to say. David shook his head at her. "Now. Just let me handle it."

Gracie's lips quivered for a moment and then she looked to Cal. He refused to meet her eyes. David made a shooing gesture at her. After one more agonizing minute she turned and began to walk back towards the trailer. Cal pretended he didn't hear her start to cry as she walked away.

"I need you to listen to me," David told him.

"I'm not listening to a damn thing. I'm done with you." Cal stepped backwards away from David before he gave into the urge to knock the shit out of him just one more time. The knee he'd shattered playing varsity football was on fire. He locked his jaw and squared his shoulders. He was determined not to cry as he began limping back down the driveway towards the road.

He made it three steps before his knee buckled under him.

"Where the fuck is your truck?" David demanded.

"Broke down on the goddamned highway about two miles from here. Alternator again." Cal spoke without turning around. "I figured I'd just crash on your couch tonight since we were going to fix the brakes in the morning. You can believe me when I say I would never have come here if I'd known she was with you. I would have walked all the goddamned way back to Possum Creek."

"It's not what you think between me and her. You should stay and listen to what I'm trying to tell you. You ain't going to make it half a mile with the way you're limping," David's voice was thick with irritation.

Cal ignored him and tentatively took another step. The pressure was bad but Cal was stubborn. He would make his bad leg carry him back to Possum Creek come hell or high water. His determination lasted two more steps before his knee buckled underneath him for a second time. He stopped himself from falling by grabbing a small pine tree on the side of the driveway.

"I reckon that's my problem, ain't it?" He glared at David, gritting his teeth through the pain as he tried to get his leg to support his weight.

"You are one dumb, stubborn son-of-a-bitch." David walked over to his Toyota and snatched the keys out of the ignition. He threw them to Cal. Cal let them land on the ground at his feet instead of catching them. "Take my truck, if you won't stay here," David told him. "Bring it back in the morning. I need your help with something."

Cal damn near laughed. Only David would tie up with him one minute and then have the audacity to demand that everything between them be fine less than five minutes later. He nudged the keys through the dirt with the toe of his boot.

"Call Addison," Cal practically spat the words at him.

"No deal." David shook his head and then cringed when more blood oozed out of his nose. "I was counting having you help me. Addison's not going to cut it."

"You should have thought about that before you and Gracie..." Cal trailed off. He couldn't bring himself to say the words out loud. He was too tired and too hurt to admit out loud that David had taken Gracie from him. Or that she'd chosen David over him. Whatever the hell had happened. Cal didn't really care because every scenario had the same results.

"There's nothing between me and Gracie," David snapped.

"Yeah," Cal choked out a bitter laugh. "Nothing. Not clothes. Or a condom."

"Goddammit, Cal." David was getting good and angry now. "Just take my truck already. Go home. Sober up. Come back tomorrow and be ready to listen to what I'm trying to fucking tell you."

"I'm not listening to a damn thing you have to say if it involves you and Gracie."

David blew a gust of air through his lips. "Fine then. Be that way. I still need you here in the morning."

"I can't. I'm going to be working on my truck."

"Forget about the fucking truck." David wiped more blood off of his bare skin. "I'll fix the truck. Or you can keep mine. Whatever you want. I don't care. Title to the Toyota is in the top drawer of my desk at the shop. You want it? Go get it. You've got keys to my shop."

Cal opened his mouth and then closed it again. David liked his Toyota a hell of a lot. Even in the midst of his pain, Cal knew that something was seriously wrong if David was willing to give him the Toyota. Neither of them spoke. Cal glared at the keys to the Toyota. After a tense moment he bent down to pick them up. Some of the fury that had squared his shoulders was turning into a kind of grim acceptance. "Whatever. Sure. I'll take your truck and you take my girl. Sounds like your kind of trade."

It gave Cal a certain measure of satisfaction to watch David choke on his own spit as he walked back over to David's favorite little pickup truck and yanked the door open. He tried and failed to hide the flare of pain that went through his leg as he climbed into the cab of the truck and turned the key. He stomped the clutch down to the floor with a lot more force than necessary and then jammed the standard transmission into reverse with so much force the little truck shuddered. Dirt sprayed in all directions as he dumped the clutch and slammed the transmission into first gear with enough force to send 20-foot rooster tails of dirt towards the front of the trailer as he flew out of the driveway and back into the night.

### Chapter 20

"I hate him," Gracie said as David finally staggered back into the trailer. She could hear the Toyota grinding gears as Cal pushed the truck to its limits as he hit the highway.

"He's going to blow my goddamned truck up," David muttered in disbelief as they listened to the engine scream and the gears jam. It was obvious that out of everything that had happened tonight, Cal's abuse of the Toyota was the only thing that had really shaken David.

"He's such a stubborn asshole." Gracie crossed her arms over her chest and flopped down hard onto the edge of the sofa. Angry tears were running down her cheeks. "Why doesn't he ever listen to anything I have to say?"

David walked across the room to the sink and began washing the blood away. "I don't know."

"How can he think you and I are together?" Gracie demanded. "He knows me. He knows you. Why would his first thought be that we're having sex?"

"No idea," David admitted. "I knew he would be mad when he found out that you'd shot someone and I had agreed to hide the corpse. I wasn't expecting him to blow up because he thinks you and I are sleeping together."

"Calvin Walker thinks what he wants to think. You can't negotiate with him. It's like arguing with a rock." Gracie ran her hands tiredly over her face. "What business of his is it who I sleep with anyways?"

"He was drunk, Gracie. Really drunk." David cringed as soap suds came into contact with the assortment of cuts and scrapes he'd gotten during the fight. He was covered in dirt and blood but his green eyes were vibrant and flashing with life. David hobbled into the kitchen and grabbed a dirty shirt out of the laundry heap next to the washer. He held it under the ice maker until it was almost full and then pressed the makeshift ice pack across the bridge of his nose. "You know how he gets when he's drunk. You can't negotiate with him and he ain't going to listen to a fucking thing anyone says."

"I know. He's always been like that but-."

"But nothing. He'll sober up and then he'll listen when I explain what happened between you and that dead douchebag whose body is hidden out back." David scowled and readjusted the ice.

"Why bother?" Gracie asked. "Cal broke up with me eight months ago. He's the one who moved on. He's the one who got a new girlfriend less than a month after we split up. Not me. I've been single since ever since that day on the river when Cal and I split."

"You saying it doesn't matter if he thinks we slept together?" David almost seemed amused.

"Does it?" Gracie countered furiously. Her face was flushed red with anger. "I'm single. You're single. Cal's the one who has a fucking girlfriend. God only knows what he sees in Jo Beth Greene."

"You have a point," David acknowledged. "He's fixing to propose to that witch."

"He's what?" Gracie didn't try to hide the shock she felt. The news stung.

"He bought a ring," David said.

"He can't marry Jo Beth."

"I think its a bad idea," David said. "Your brother has been trying to get him to see reason, but you know Cal. He's a stubborn son-of-a-bitch."

Gracie inhaled slowly, closed her eyes and tried to get over the sudden rush of betrayal she felt at the thought of Cal marrying someone else. "I love him so much that I hate him."

"Got that all day long." David seemed strangely contemplative with his makeshift ice pack still in one hand. "I've been waiting for Cal to blow a gasket. He keeps everything under wraps all the time and lets it build up and build up under the surface. It was only a matter of time before he lost control and let someone have it. I just didn't think it would be me on the receiving end."

"If it wasn't for me being here-." Gracie trailed off in frustration.

"Don't waste your time worrying about it." David held out a hand to her and pulled her out of the couch cushions that had swallowed her whole. "What's done is done. We need to try and get some sleep."

"I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep." She buried her face into the fabric of Cal's shirt. It smelled like his cologne, and for just the briefest moment she felt safe. It broke her heart all over again to remember the raw hurt and fury in his eyes as he'd thrown the shirt at her. She grabbed the bottom of the shirt and yanked it off. She threw it down to the far end of the couch.

David raised one eyebrow at her questioningly. "Not that I don't appreciate that bra, but maybe you should keep your clothes on."

"Cal's shirt smells like his cologne," she said. "I don't want to think about him. I don't want to think about how good he looked tonight. Even drunk and angry, just the sight of him was enough to make every second since we broke up completely unbearable. I can't deal with this anymore. I can't deal with him anymore. Especially not if he's going to marry that stuck-up, bitchy Jo Beth."

David started to laugh and then stopped abruptly with a flinch of pain as his cracked ribs sent flares of pain through his chest. "Y'all are such a fucking mess."

"I need to get over him," Gracie said. "I was trying to get over him. He's never going to yield. He's never going to change. He's never going to give. I know that. I've moved on with my life. I went away to college. I tried to find a new guy."

"You shot the new guy." David flinched as the ice pack moved across his busted nose.

"I never said moving on was working out well for me," Gracie said. "But I have been trying. I have to try because I can't live with him. I love him to death but he's got to learn to listen to me when I need to talk to him. He's got to give."

"I agree completely," David said. "In fact, I've had that conversation with him. He's too damn much like Pappy."

"I can't live the rest of my life with a younger model of Pappy," Gracie said. "I just can't do it. Maybe he's better off marrying Jo Beth. I can't deal with him when he's acts like a stubborn jackass. I realized it the morning after we broke up. It's just... He doesn't ever give, David. He's so stubborn. It's his way or no way at all."

"Yeah," David appeared nonplussed. "That's Cal."

"I thought that maybe if I stuck to my guns long enough, maybe he'd give. Just a little." She sighed. "Maybe he'd admit that... Never mind. It's not important now. He hates me." She choked on the last words.

"No. He doesn't." David adjusted the ice pack again. "Trust me. He's drunk. He'll get over it. Let him cool down and we'll explain what happened. He's supposed to come back over in the morning. I'll talk to him then."

"You really think he'll come in the morning?" she asked. "Even with as mad as he is?"

"He's predictable to a fault," David nodded. "Now it's time for us to go bed. We have a long day ahead of us. The sun will be up in a couple of hours. I don't want anyone seeing Cal's truck on the side of the road and then coming down here and asking questions. I want to go get it at soon as the sun comes up."

Gracie nodded in reluctant agreement. "Then what?"

"Same plan as before. Cal and I are going to deal with your boy and your BMW."

Gracie hugged herself to keep from shivering. She was somewhat stunned to realize that the fight between Cal and David had seemed so much more real and so much worse than Brett's death that she had temporarily forgotten what had brought her to Possum Creek tonight in the first place.

Her nausea came back full force when she thought about Brett lying dead on the BMW's creamy leather seats with blood leaking out of his nose and mouth. She didn't realize her knees were giving out again until David grabbed hold of her to steady her. "Easy Gracie. Breathe. Breathe in. Breathe out. Okay?"

Gracie took a deep breath. Her chest was so tight she felt like she was going to die.

### Chapter 21

"I can't sleep." Gracie knelt down on the edge of David's bed. "All I see is Brett's half blown off face staring at me every time I close my eyes."

David sat up in the bed and beckoned her over. "You think you might be able to sleep if you're in the bed with me?"

"I think-." Gracie took a deep breath and looked at him. His bare chest rippled with muscle in the moonlight. His dark eyes were intense as he took in her nearness. She'd opted to try to sleep in the bedroom that her brother usually borrowed when he stayed at David's house. She was wearing one of Addison's t-shirts and nothing else. "I need something to get my mind off everything that's happened."

David raised one eyebrow at her. "What did you have in mind?"

"I don't know for sure. I want to feel something," Gracie said softly. "The last few months, I've just felt like I'm dead. All I ever do is just go through the motions. I spend all day failing my classes. I spend all night laying alone in my bed staring at the ceiling and wishing I were back with Cal. I'm living my life in a haze."

"You still feel that way after tonight?" David seemed skeptical.

"No. Tonight feels like a very real, very painful nightmare that I can't wake up from." Gracie bit her lip. She looked away from him as she took a deep breath. "I had thought about sleeping with Brett tonight."

"I thought you said he tried to rape you?"

"I changed my mind about sleeping with him after he told me I was going to put out whether I liked it or not. But if he'd been nice, if the date had been okay, I was going to sleep with him."

"Why would you sleep with a guy on the first date?" David frowned at her.

"Because Cal is the only guy I've ever slept with."

"Gracie-."

"He's marrying Jo Beth. He's moved on." Gracie threw her hands up in anger and frustration. "He's moved on and I'm still pitifully pining after him. I think sleeping with someone else would do me some good. It might help me get over Cal."

"Gracie, maybe you and Cal should just-."

"Talk it out?" Gracie suggested bitterly. "Tried that. He wouldn't listen. Just like tonight. He didn't listen. He only cares about what he's got stuck in his own stubborn mind."

David closed his eyes and sighed. "What do you want from me, baby girl?"

"I don't know," Gracie admitted reluctantly. She took a deep breath and steeled herself for rejection. "Would it be too much if I said I wanted sex?"

He didn't look nearly as surprised as she'd thought he would. "You want to sleep with me?"

"It's been eight months since I had sex."

"And?" David rubbed one hand through his shaggy brown hair.

"How long as it been for you?" She asked him.

"Longer than eight months," David snorted. "I like being single and one night stands cause too much drama."

"You don't want me?" Gracie didn't believe it.

"That's not it. Cal will kill me."

"Cal already thinks we're sleeping together." Gracie blinked back tears. "Besides, it's not Cal's business who either one of us sleep with. He's got Jo Beth, remember?"

"You want to sleep with me to get back at Cal for sleeping with Jo Beth?" David sounded skeptical.

"I want to sleep with you because I want to be held. I want to be kissed. I just want to have someone touch me. Hold me. Make me feel like everything will be okay." She closed her eyes and waited for him to reject her. "I don't want to think about Cal anymore. I don't want his touch to be my only experience with a man."

David sighed. "He'll never forgive either one of us."

"Screw him," Gracie said. "I'm tired of worrying about whether or not Cal approves of what I do. I'll never forgive him for buying an engagement ring for Jo Beth. Cal and I are done forever. It's over. I don't give a shit about him."

David laughed. He reached for her arm and then pulled her across the bed and into his chest. "For the record, I think this is a bad idea and we're going to regret doing this in the morning."

Gracie wrapped her arms around his neck. "I don't care. Shut up and fuck me. Please."

"Okay then. But we do this my way." David grabbed her arms and pinned them over her head while straddling her legs. She couldn't move but at the same time the excitement built up low in her groin.

David bent and hungrily kissed her mouth probing it with his tongue. She tasted whiskey and greedily kissed him back. She was frustrated over the restraint but at the same time it built her excitement. He broke the kiss and moved towards her ear, nipping at the lobe. She whimpered with need, still squirming under his restraint and wanting more. He trailed his tongue down her neck, his hot breath causing her flesh to quiver. Her nipples stretched at the fabric of the thin t-shirt she was wearing. He gently nipped at the protruding bud, causing her to gasp. He growled low in his throat as he bit down a little harder. Still grasping her hands in one of his, he pushed the shirt up over her firm breasts and took the other hard bud in his mouth while pinching the other nipple between his fingers tugging on it. He let go of her nipple then ran his hand down her stomach stopping just before her pussy.

"Please. You're driving me crazy," she said.

"Please what?" David growled. " I want to hear you beg for it, Gracie."

"You're teasing me," she whimpered.

"Well, you said you wanted to feel something, I'm just obliging you." He grinned wickedly at her before thrusting two fingers into her throbbing wet pussy.

"Oh God!" She cried as his finger found the little nub that would drive her to the edge.

"What do you want Gracie? I want to hear you say it"

"Please fuck me, I can't stand it any more!"

" Not yet..come here." He pulled her up off the bed by her hands and pushed her to her knees. "Undo my pants."

Her hands shook with excitement as she undid the button and pulled the zipper down. She reached in and pulled out his already hard cock. " You know what to do."

She flicked the tip of her tongue over the head then slid her mouth all the way down. David leaned back and thrust himself into her. "God damn you feel good."

She slowly moved her mouth up and down his shaft, swirling her tongue around as she sucked. He wrapped his hand in her hair and encouraged her to go faster. "Yes. Just like that," he said with a groan.

"Finger your pussy while you suck my cock." he told her. " Make yourself cum."

Her hand slid between her legs as she stroked her self. She couldn't believe how wet she was. Her fingers frantically rubbed her clit bringing her closer to orgasm. She stopped sucking as she crossed over the edge into orgasm barely able to stay kneeling in front of him. "I don't want to make myself cum. I want you do to it."

"Don't worry. We're not done yet." He pulled her to her feet, tugging the t-shirt over her head as he did. He stepped out of his pants he turned her around and shoved her up against the wall pushing her legs apart. He thrust his hard cock deep into her waiting pussy in one hard thrust.

"Oh god," she moaned. She didn't think she could reach another orgasm but he reached around and found her clit as he thrust deep inside her. "You feel so good."

"Scream for me," he growled in her ear as he pushed his thick, hard cock deeper inside her.

She screamed. Her whole body shook as the orgasm overtook her and he thrust one final time shooting his load deep inside her. Still breathing heavily they both fell back on the bed, satisfied.

"Feel better?" David asked.

Gracie didn't answer him. She was already fast asleep.

### Chapter 22

It took Kerry Longwood almost an hour to record the full extent of Amelia Baxter's claims that Addison Malone had assaulted her while removing a raccoon from her home the night before. He was almost through rewriting the report in his very neatest handwriting when Ian McIntyre came strolling through the front door wearing a plain white t-shirt, blue jeans and toting a NASCAR lunchbox.

"If that's a Amelia Baxter report then you're wasting your time." Ian gestured to the stack of papers in Kerry's hand.

"How did you know?" Kerry was baffled.

"I seen her pulling out of the parking lot as I pulled in." Ian made a face. "You're wasting your time writing all that out. Frank won't read 'em. He just rips 'em up and tosses 'em in the trash. Amelia Baxter's crazier than a shithouse alligator."

"She said Addison Malone tried to rape her." Kerry decided to momentarily ignore the fact his only competition for the job of Callahan County Sheriff's deputy was apparently on a first name basis with the man doing the hiring. "I was taught to take all citizens complaints seriously. We shouldn't just brush her off because she's a little different."

"Addy's got half the girls in Possum Creek chasing his truck down the road trying to get his attention. He ain't going to waste his time on something like Amelia," Ian said with a shake of his head. "He told me about the coon this morning. He said Jo Beth Green was with him. Jo ain't the type to let Addison get away with looking at someone funny. She sure as heck ain't going to go along with him raping a woman. She don't like Addison as is."

Kerry looked down at his report doubtfully. "You're sure there's nothing to this?" he asked.

"Positive." Ian shrugged his shoulders. "Sorry. I'm sure you spent a lot of time on it. That woman talks forever. Not to mention she smells like a backed-up septic tank."

Kerry nodded and pushed the stack of papers to the side with a sigh. "What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you were off today."

"Sheriff forgot his lunch at the house," Ian said as he held up the lunchbox. "Momma wanted me to bring it to him. He gets grouchy when he don't eat, and she don't want him eating nothing fried at the diner on account of his diabetes."

This time Kerry didn't try to hide his disbelief. "Your mother packs the Sheriff lunch?"

"Oh, uh. Yeah. They're kinda a couple, I guess." Ian was visibly struggling to decide how much to admit to Kerry. "They ain't getting married though. Momma would lose her benefits from when my Daddy died if she married the Sheriff."

"I see." Kerry just barely managed to avoid groaning out loud. Ian apparently read his mind.

"Don't worry. Frank done told me already that his being with Momma isn't going to affect who he chooses to hire for the job or nothing." Ian frowned. "No offense, but I kinda wish it would. I'm gonna need all the help I can get. At least Addison's already promised that if I put all my reports on his desk, he'll rewrite 'em so that everything is spelled right before I give 'em to the Sheriff."

"You're kidding me." Kerry didn't know whether to laugh or feel sorry for Ian.

"No," Ian looked vaguely embarrassed. "I can't spell to save my life and my grammar's god-awful bad. The only reason I managed to pass English in high school was because Katie helped me with everything. Frank said I couldn't have her proofreading all the police reports though. He said it would violate folks' privacy. I don't see where it violates anything, but I guess that's why he's the boss and I ain't. You know Katie is the daytime dispatcher for Callahan County, don't you? She takes all the calls that come in. She already knows what's going on around here. Frank says that ain't good enough, and she can't write my reports for me."

"Addison's going to do it instead," Kerry finished out the conversation. It was hard to believe he'd gone from being 15th in his law school class to competing for a backwoods Sheriff's Deputy position with a guy who wasn't literate enough to write his own reports.

Ian nodded and for a moment the two of them just stared at one another.

"You know, if you really want to investigate Amelia's reports, I can bring you one of the alien kittens."

"Alien kittens?" Kerry repeated the words certain he hadn't heard Ian right.

"Yeah. She came in a couple of weeks ago with a box full of little bitty kittens. They were so little that only two of them had their eyes open. She said her next door neighbor had been abducted by aliens and replaced with a clone. Then she said the alien clone of her neighbor had made babies with her cat and the kittens were the half alien. She brought 'em in as evidence."

"Alien kittens," Kerry groaned.

"Frank gave me the whole box after she'd left. He said since the kittens were too little to eat by themselves, I should take 'em down to the river and drown 'em." Ian made a face. "I ain't never killed no animal that I wasn't planning on eating. Especially not a helpless little bitty baby kitten. I took 'em home to Katie instead. She had to bottle feed them at first. They're eating solid food real good now. I don't think they're real aliens, but you can have one if you want. Just to check and be sure."

"Sure. Why not?" Kerry didn't know whether he should laugh or cry. "I could use a pet."

Ian grinned at him. "Cool. Now I only have four more to find homes for."

### Chapter 23

Cal didn't sleep well and he was in a lousy mood when he woke up a few minutes after 6 a.m. The first step he'd taken when he'd gotten out of bed confirmed that he hadn't imagined his truck dying on the side of the road or fighting with David last night after he'd left Leon's bar. The pain in his knee served the same reminder his throbbing headache and churning stomach did as far as last night's activities were concerned.

The look on his Momma's face when he tried to sneak out of the house by way of the kitchen confirmed that he wasn't going to be able to completely get away with the 'everything is fine, nothing is wrong' tactic he normally used to bulldoze his way through less than pleasant situations.

"Calvin, what happened to your face?" Loretta was standing in between the breakfast nook and the back door with a concerned frown on her normally pleasant face.

"Nothing." Cal hoped she would leave him alone if he didn't offer her any information. He wasn't interested in pushing his luck when it had already become blatantly obvious he didn't have any luck to speak of.

"Why are you limping like that?"

"I twisted my knee last night." He considered grabbing a drink out of the refrigerator but decided it would be both quicker and less complicated if he just picked something up at the Gas-N-Go on his way to David's.

Not that he really wanted to go to David's. In fact, skipping out on David was sounding better and better with every painful step he took towards the kitchen door. He'd never blown David off before, but David sure as hell deserved it now. Cal gritted his teeth and hoped his mother had somewhere else to be other than in the kitchen aggravating him. Loretta Walker spent most Saturday mornings hopping between various ladies groups, charity projects, and church activities. It was a rare Saturday that Loretta was left without plans.

"I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't lie to me." Loretta stepped between Cal and the door. She had to look up to him because she was only a hair over five feet tall. She gently touched one of the cuts on his cheek. "You're limping. You've got a split lip. You're all cut up. What happened to you?"

"I fell." Cal shrugged and pushed her hand aside. He could tell she was worried but her concern annoyed him instead of comforting him. He just wanted to be left alone. He wondered what it would be like to just get in the truck and drive away from this place. He wondered what it would be like to leave behind everything familiar and just start over from scratch.

Cal had been born in Callahan County. Cal's parents had been in born in Callahan County. Cal's grandparents had been born in Callahan County. His grandpappy had donated the land J.L. Walker Elementary School sat on. Cal's mother was the 'Loretta' who had inspired Loretta Avenue. Cal had a hundred years of family history that was tied to every brick and tree in Possum Creek. Family ties that ensured a solidly upper-middle class life had already been laid out for him by the time he was potty trained.

He'd never worked anywhere besides Pappy's hardware and building supply store. He probably never would. His Dad never had. He already owned a 20-acre parcel of land, just north of the city limits. The land had been his high school graduation present from Pappy. His cousin April Lynne had been offered an identical parcel directly beside it when she'd graduated. There was a third parcel waiting for April Lynne's younger brother, Leroy, when he walked the stage.

Cal had been building the house with his own two hands, one brick at a time. So far he'd managed the foundation and most of the framing. He hadn't told anyone about it. Not even his father or Jo Beth.

Especially not his father or Jo Beth. He didn't want to tell them. They would both be marching him down the damned church aisle so fast he would hardly have time to sign over the title to his truck for the mini-van Jo would probably want to buy as a souvenir on the honeymoon.

"I see." Loretta wasn't letting him off the hook so easily. Her voice jarred him back to the present. "Why are you driving David's truck?"

"I. Uh. Don't worry about it, Momma." Cal scowled. He'd forgotten about the Toyota being parked front and center in the driveway. He'd completely and totally forgotten about his brand new 25-year- old truck, courtesy of David feeling guilty.

"Don't tell me your truck broke down again?" His mother's concern was starting to get on his nerves.

"I said don't worry about it."

"You know, I think Jo Beth is right. It's time for you to trade the Chevy in on a newer truck. Your Dad looked at your odometer the other day, and he told me you have over 400,000 miles on that thing." She seemed nonplussed. "You know, when we bought it for you at 16 and told you that you had better be grateful, we didn't intend for you to take that as meaning that you had to drive it until the wheels fell off. We just wanted it to last through graduation." She chuckled softly. "We don't mind co-signing for you if you want to go down to the dealership and get a brand new truck."

"It's fine Momma." Cal wasn't in the mood for listening to her. "I've already had this discussion once in the last 24 hours. I like my truck, and you sound like Jo Beth."

"Jo Beth has a good head on her shoulders," Loretta smiled sadly. "Cal, quit being so stubborn and tell me what's going on."

Cal shook his head, which only succeeded in making his headache 20 times worse. "Just leave me alone, please. I don't want to talk about it."

Loretta frowned at him worriedly. "I wish you would talk to me sometimes. I worry about you."

"I'm fine, Momma. I had a lousy night, okay?"

"Did something happen between you and Jo Beth?"

It took Cal a minute to remember how he'd managed to go from date night with Jo Beth to fighting with David. "Yes. No. Maybe. Hell if I know. It was just a bad night all around."

He definitely wasn't in the mood to discuss Jo's opinion on how he'd had everything in life handed to him because he was a Walker. Come to think of it, he wasn't in the mood to relive that conversation ever again.

"If you want to talk about it, you know I'm here for you."

"I don't want to talk about it." He gently took her by her rounded shoulders and guided her out of his way. "I need to go clear my head for a while, okay?"

Loretta frowned at him. "You remind me so much of your Pappy when you get like this. You can't handle everything in the world all by yourself, Cal."

"I'll keep that in mind," Cal muttered as he grabbed the door knob in his hand and pulled it open.

"I love you, son."

"Love you too." Cal slipped out the door and into the morning without any idea of where he was headed.

### Chapter 24

"I wish I knew what was wrong with this piece of shit. I swear it's possessed." David leaned on the side of the engine compartment and scowled down at the engine of Cal's Chevy.

"Possessed?" Gracie desperately wanted to curl up in the passenger seat of the truck and go to sleep. Preferably until this entire nightmare was over. Having sex with David had been fun, but it hadn't done anything to make losing Cal hurt any less.

David had told Gracie about Kerry's return to Possum Creek during their walk to retrieve Cal's broken down truck. She'd immediately realized how much riskier getting rid of Brett's car and body were going to be with a paranoid, vengeful deputy watching David's every move. David had admitted that he actually hadn't gotten that far in his planning yet, but avoiding Kerry was definitely something he was going to have to give priority to. Getting rid of Kerry was going to become top priority once Gracie was taken care of.

Gracie was almost too tired to be nervous, but she kept scanning the roadways in either direction. The last thing they needed was Kerry pulling up to hassle them about what they were doing with Cal's truck.

"It's getting worse all the time. I swear this SOB has a mind of its own. It only runs when it wants to. It quits when it wants to. I can't ever find a damned thing wrong with it, and I've already replaced every part that I can think of." David threw up his hands in irritation and glared at the truck.

"I thought you said something about the alternator last night."

"I did," David scowled. "But I took that off of it last week and had it checked when I went into Canterville. Not to mention it's less than a year old."

"Oh." Gracie stared at the truck for a moment and decided David was probably right about the truck being possessed. "What do you think the chances are it wants to run right now?"

"Hell if I know. I don't see anything obvious wrong with it. Give it a try and see if it'll fire up. If it bursts into flames, it'll be doing us all a favor."

Gracie located the spare key in the ashtray and sent up a silent prayer the truck wouldn't burst into flames as she stuck the key into the ignition. She loved Cal's truck. Most of her good memories from high school had occurred while riding around in the middle of the bench seat, snuggled up against Cal's side. She'd lost her virginity in this truck. She closed her eyes and tried her best not to think about the memories of scented candles on the toolbox and Cal's beat up old fiddle playing Dixie in the moonlight.

She had to fight a lump in her throat as Cal's fury from the previous night flashed front and center into her mind. She shouldn't have slept with David. It had been a mistake.

Wondering if life would ever be okay again, Gracie straightened in the seat and twisted the key. The engine grunted for a moment and then turned over with a growl. The Chevy belched blue exhaust into the early morning air.

"I'll be damned." David slammed the hood shut and walked around to the passenger side of the truck as Gracie started to get back out of the driver's seat. He shook his head. "Just drive it back to the house. Don't give it a chance to reconsider."

Gracie nodded and settled into the seat, blinking back an unexpected rush of tears as she shifted the familiar gearshift down into drive and pulled out onto the highway.

"Can't believe this fucker started right up," David grumbled under his breath. "I swear to God this piece of shit truck is out to get me."

"How do you figure?" Gracie rubbed her fingers across the worn steering wheel cover.

"Last time it broke down, I had to spend two hours sitting in the 100 degree heat with Jo Beth and her Momma." David explained. "This time it craps out in front of my house on the one damned night of my life when it would be better for everyone involved if Cal wasn't around. The other 364 days this year it wouldn't of mattered."

"I didn't think about that."

"I could have handled shit with him if he'd shown up this morning. Just my luck that he's got to show up drunk and pissed the hell off over this damned truck. Of course he's gonna flip out when he sees me with you and neither of us have half the clothes on that we're supposed to."

"David, I didn't mean for-."

He held up his hand and smiled faintly. "Trust me Gracie, sex was the furthest damn thought from my mind when Cal walked in last night. Fuck, I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with your boyfriend's damned body when Cal came crashing in like the No. 1 car in his personal demolition derby."

Gracie sighed and tightened her grip on the Chevy's steering wheel. "He's such an ass."

"Yeah, well, we're not exactly angels ourselves." David trailed off and tentatively touched his grotesquely swollen nose. "Not that last night wasn't fun."

"What we did last night was our own damned business." A familiar irritation temporarily wiped away the guilt she'd been feeling. "We're both single, consenting adults. Having sex was probably a bad idea, but I don't belong to Calvin Walker. He broke up with me. That means that what I do isn't up to him. Including who I sleep with."

"Well, if you ever want another revenge fuck, you know my number." David leaned his head back against the passenger's side head rest and closed his eyes. "It was fun."

Gracie opened her mouth and then closed it again without saying a word. She didn't have anything she could say to that.

### Chapter 25

"This is asinine." Addison stared at the unfortunate idiot who had somehow managed to hogtie himself in front of his own pickup truck. "I should arrest you just for wasting my time."

"Oh come on, Addy. Help me out here."

Addison continued to survey the situation. "Reg, do you really expect me to go knee deep in swamp mud before 10 a.m. just to save your sorry ass?"

Reggie Gunther considered for a minute and then nodded the affirmative. "You're gonna have to. If I could get my own self out of this mess, none of us would be here right now." The poacher had a point.

"You do realize that you're under arrest, right?" Kerry stared skeptically at the scruffy poacher. The man was knee deep in mud, tangled in a length of thick rope and staring at them through bloodshot eyes. His late 1990s Ford truck was hopelessly mired in the mud directly in front of him. It appeared he had been trying to hook up a rope to the truck when he'd gotten himself stuck right beside the Ford.

Reggie looked back over at Addison. "Tell me this twerp isn't serious?"

Addison yawned. "Tell me I didn't get drug out of bed to deal with this bullshit. Where's Kevin?"

"He turned tail and left me as soon as he saw them damned lights. I done told him it wasn't you. Your lights ain't green and red and orange. He was so darned worried about violating his probation that he hauled ass and left me here even though he knowed both me and the truck were stucker than shit."

Reggie glared at no one in particular. "He said there wasn't no sense in both of us getting busted."

"Well, if you admit he was poaching with you, I can still arrest him using your testimony," Kerry announced, looking thoughtful. Reggie groaned loudly. He had a look of horror on his face.

"Tell me he wouldn't." Reggie looked up at Addison with pleading eyes. "I'm already in enough trouble as is once Maude finds out we took her truck and got it stuck. I wasn't supposed to go nowhere but the store for a gallon of milk. She had to be at work by 8 o'clock this morning."

"Hope she found another ride." Addison felt sorry for stupid, hopeless Reggie. Neither of the Gunther boys were bad people. They were just hopelessly dumb. Addison spent a fair amount of time saving the pair of them from themselves. The last time he'd had to save them, it was because their homemade boat had up and decided to sink with them in it. They'd been floating in the middle of the lake, clinging to a beer cooler, and waiting for rescue. Turned out neither of the Gunther boys could swim.

"Oh shit. It's after eight, ain't it?"

"It's almost 9:30."

"Aw man, this sucks." Reggie wiggled in the mud. "At least get me outta here."

"You're going straight to jail when we do," Kerry said a little more forcefully than necessary. "You realize that, right?"

Reggie looked Kerry up and down for a moment. "Aren't you the kid who used to twitch all the time back in high school?"

Kerry gritted his teeth. "That has nothing to do with the current situation."

Reggie grinned and started to giggle. "Yeah man, I remember you. Didn't you run across the football field naked during homecoming one year?"

Kerry turned to Addison, his face flushing a bright red. "How about you get that truck out now? And impound it."

Addison struggled to keep a straight face.

"Aw man, come on. I can't afford no impound fees," Reggie stared up at the two of them. "Addison, you know me."

"I'll pull it out of the mud but I don't tow vehicles on the highway," he said to Kerry. "You want to have something towed and impounded then you'll have to call David Breedlove and set it up with him."

"Y'all don't have an impound lot." Reggie was looking rather miserable as he realized the truth of his fate.

"Of course we do. Every law enforcement agency has some kind of impound lot." Kerry then turned to Addison. "Right?"

"Actually, Reggie's got a point." Addison was busying himself hooking a winch chain to the rear hitch on Maude Gunther's truck.

Kerry stared at Addison, completely stupefied. "What do you do with cars you tow?"

"We don't."

"You don't?"

"Tow cars. Not very often anyways. We typically just let the owner call someone else to come get them."

"David doesn't like to waste his time towing cars," Reggie chimed in. "He really don't. He charges an arm and a leg to tow anything that isn't going to his shop for repairs."

"Yeah, and knowing Frank he'll take it out of your paycheck." Addison studied the stuck Ford for a moment. "The towing bill for coming way out here on a Saturday morning will probably be close to $500. You have enough hours on your check to cover that, Kerry?"

"Why on Earth would I have to pay it?"

"Frank doesn't keep any money in the budget for towing or keeping citizens' vehicles. Whoever makes the call to keep them has to literally keep them," Addy explained with a shrug. "David picks up the 'impounded' vehicle, drives it to your personal residence, drops it in your yard, and sticks you with the bill. Just to give you a heads up, he likes to leave the car in the most inconvenient place possible."

"That's ridiculous." Kerry shot the truck and Reggie a frustrated look. "I guess you can just let whoever comes get it, but I'm still taking him to jail." He pointed at Reggie.

"Why? Can't you just write me a ticket and let me go?" Reggie looked at Kerry in total disbelief. "That's what he always does." He gestured towards Addison.

"That's not how things are supposed to be done." Kerry attempted to level Addison with a scathing look, but Addy appeared unperturbed. "You're going to be arrested, charged, and sit in jail until Monday morning when the judge sets bond. If you can afford to pay it, you can leave."

"I'll miss work," Reggie's jaw was nearly on the ground. "Come on now. I can't be missing work. I'll lose my job." He looked over at Addison. "Can't you do something about him?"

"Not really." Addy shook his head and shrugged helplessly at Reggie. "There's a new kind of law in town. If you don't like it, talk to the Sheriff."

"I think I'll be doing that," Reggie muttered under his breath with a frown as Kerry began reading him his rights.

### Chapter 26

The Chevy was parked front and center in David's driveway when Cal finally worked up the nerve to pull up to his best friend's house. The hood was closed and the spare key was in the ignition. Cal turned the key just to see what would happen. The big V8 engine cranked on the first try. David had promised to fix Cal's truck and he had.

Cal almost wished David had left the Chevy broken on the side of the road. It was easier to stay mad when he had a tangible reason to be mad. Cal really wanted an excuse to stay mad at David. He'd tried to clear his head by driving in circles around Callahan County for two hours. The only conclusion he'd managed to come to was that he wasn't sure he could stomach seeing David and Gracie together in the light of day, but he was going to have to try.

Losing David to Gracie would leave him alone with Jo Beth and her matching sweater sets. He didn't want a minivan or a sweater set. He was starting to admit to himself that maybe he really didn't want Jo Beth either. He wanted Gracie, but it was too late for that.

He wanted his best friend to stay his best friend.

"I was starting to think you weren't going to show."

Cal turned to see David standing next to the side of the trailer. He was wearing ripped jeans and a t-shirt that would have been better off as a grease rag. His nose was swollen to three times its usual size and both his eyes were black. He had a pry bar hanging loosely in his left hand. Cal wondered briefly if David meant to use the pry bar on him.

"I damn near didn't," Cal admitted after a moment's hesitation. "How did you get my truck off the side of the road?"

"I drove it," David said. The fight and Gracie hung in the air between them like a brick wall.

"What?" Cal frowned at him.

"Truck cranked right up this morning," David said.

"Son of a bitch," Cal glared at the Chevy.

"Agreed. This thing is an SOB. You should sell it."

"You're the third person to say that in less than 24 hours. I'm starting to notice a theme."

"Jo Beth's opinion doesn't count. Who else told you to sell it?"

"Momma. She offered to co-sign on a new truck for me when she saw your truck in the driveway this morning."

"You should do that." David leaned against the hood of the Chevy and tapped the side with the pry bar. "I really don't have the slightest fucking clue what's wrong with this truck. I can't promise you it ain't going to strand you again because I can't find anything else to fix."

"I'll keep that in mind." Cal tried to play it cool and failed. "Look man, I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about it. It's just a truck." David shrugged his shoulders and made a big show out of brushing dirt off the toe of one of his boots. Cal noticed the steel was poking out of the steel toe.

"I'm not talking about the truck," Cal clarified even though he knew he didn't have to. "If you and Gracie are happy together, I'll deal with it. Okay? I don't like it but I'll live with it. I'm sorry for kicking your ass last night. I was drunk. Very drunk."

"I know you were drunk. I realized it around the same time I realized I could have hit you upside the head with a truck axle and you still wouldn't have felt anything. Besides, you only kicked my ass because I let you kick my ass," David lied. He brushed off the apology like it didn't matter. He acted like he'd never doubted that Cal was still his friend. "About Gracie..."

"I don't want to talk about you and Gracie," Cal clarified his point. "I'll deal with it. That's all."

"We don't have time to talk about Gracie. Not that you would listen to a word I tried to tell you. You'd just as soon shoot me as look at me. I can see it in your eyes."

"You're sleeping with Gracie." Cal tried and failed to keep the furious hurt from his voice.

"I tried to explain to you last night," David started. "You've got the wrong-."

"Stop. Just stop. I don't want to hear your explanation." Cal gritted his teeth. "I said I would deal with you and Gracie being together if that's what makes y'all happy. I never said I would like it or that it didn't make me want to throw up every single fucking time I think about it. I don't care if you were about to have sex or just checking her for ticks. Doesn't make a difference. You and Gracie were alone together without your clothes. End of story. I may be dealing with it without breaking any more of your bones, but that doesn't mean I want details."

"Fine. We won't talk about it. Not right now, anyways. I wasn't lying to you last night when I said I needed your help today." David hesitated for a moment before continuing. "We've got a hell of a lot bigger problems than your truck."

Cal forced himself to meet his best friend's eyes. He was expecting to see anger in David's face. He half expected David to smack him upside the head with the pry bar. The worry and fear he saw in David's expression both surprised and unnerved him. He hadn't expected David to be scared.

"What's wrong?" Cal was suddenly very aware of the smell of fire coming from the back yard. David never lit the burn barrel this early in the morning. His clothes were covered in automotive grease but that was wrong too. David said he hadn't found anything to fix on the Chevy. He didn't repair customer cars at the house any more.

"We have a car to get rid of. It's hot." David confirmed all of Cal's fears as he gestured for him to follow him to the back of the property.

"How hot?" Cal walked behind the trailer and out into the field that separated David's property from a creek and a 20,000-acre chunk of government owned wildlife management area. He stopped short when he caught sight of the half-disassembled heap of metal next to the shed. The emblems on the ground pegged it as a BMW. The dashboard had been tossed casually out in the grass. Two large five-gallon buckets were positioned on either side of what had once been the front clip. Cal could see the water pump, a door handle, and part of the window motor sticking up from a nest of stray bolts and stripped electrical wires.

"Hot." David gestured at the mess. "We need to dispose of the whole thing. Can't risk leaving a single bolt behind."

"Dammit David." Cal was pissed. "You can't be serious?"

"Do I look serious?" David wedged the pry bar into the back fender and began to peel the metal away from the body of the car. "Car needs to be straight scrap metal, Cal. We need it gone before the sun goes down."

"What happened to you only dealing in American made, easy to dispose of stolen cars?" Cal wanted to play tough but he was having a hard time doing it when David had two black eyes and a broken nose.

"I didn't pick this one," David explained without explaining a damn thing.

"It didn't just turn up here on its own," Cal pointed out.

"You going to help me or not?" David picked up the cutting torch and held it out to Cal. It made for a lousy peace offering but Cal took it anyway.

"Yeah. I'll help. You owe me for this."

"You have no fucking idea."

### Chapter 27

"Why do you always break the promises you make me?" Cal glared at David over the flatbed of the wrecker. A large pile of miscellaneous car parts was stacked in between them. Gracie could see bits and pieces of what had once been Brett's beautiful BMW. The luxury sedan had been disassembled until it was little more than a collection of scrap parts. David had disguised the contents of the load further by mixing in a wide assortment of junk metal that had no relationship at all to the car. Gracie could see the bed off an old Chevrolet, the busted rear axle from Addison's Ford, a dozen mismatched rims and a handful of radiators.

Cal and David had been arguing for the last five minutes about whether or not they should put the transmission that was lying directly in front of the porch on the load. David thought it would help further disguise the true nature of what he was hauling. Cal didn't want to pick the damn thing up.

"I don't know what you're talking about." David tossed another stray rim onto the flatbed.

"Sure you do." Cal's face was flushed red and the back of his t-shirt was already soaked through with sweat. "It took us nearly a year to get rid of all those cars your Dad stole and hid in the backyard. We spent every weekend for ten months straight playing extreme makeover: junkyard edition. You remember what you promised me when we got done?"

"I promised that we'd never have to cut up another stolen car as long as we lived," he grumbled. "I guess you're right. I guess I lied. Sorry about that. If it makes you feel any better, I'm not having fun."

"No, it doesn't. And don't even think about it." Cal had caught David eyeballing the transmission again. It was still connected to the transfer case and easily weighed more than David and Cal did put together. "We're not loading that."

"Fine. Whatever you want. We've got enough on the truck that no one is going to be able to see that damned car." David shrugged his shoulders. He grabbed a ratchet strap out of the cab of the truck and started running it across the load, securing everything in place and making sure nothing would be able to fall of the bed of the truck.

"What car?" Cal rolled his eyes as he grabbed a second strap and started going through the same motions David was already performing on the opposite side of the truck. "I think this is the most thorough chop job I've ever seen you do, and that's saying something."

"Can't be too careful these days. Especially not with Kerry wandering around with a badge pinned to his diapers."

"Kerry is going to throw your ass in jail for 20 years if you keep this kind of shit up." Cal jerked his head towards the load on the wrecker. There was hostility in Cal's voice that Gracie had never heard there before. It was clear that he wasn't just talking about the BMW. "You need to clean your act up, Breedlove."

Cal hadn't so much as cast a single glance in Gracie's direction since he'd pulled up in David's Toyota nearly three hours ago. He'd kept his back turned towards her most of the time. When he did have to face her, he made sure he wasn't looking straight at her. Being ignored by him hurt worse than being screamed at would have. She was used to looking for him first whenever she walked into a room. She had always been able to count on the open appreciation and affection in his eyes when he first caught sight of her across the school hallway, church parking lot, football field, crowded bar, or wherever the heck it was they had happened to be at the time. He'd always been her rock.

Gracie desperately wanted to go to Cal, throw her arms around him, and tell him everything that had happened in the last 24 hours. She wanted him to know how sorry she was about how everything had gone last March. She wanted him to know the BMW was the result of her bad decisions. It was unfair to make David take the blame when he was already taking on so much of the responsibility for her mistakes.

A loud popping sound came from the driver's side of the wrecker. The noise startled Gracie out of her own thoughts and back into the present, where David was holding up a broken metal hook that had previously been attached to the ratchet strap.

"Dammit." David glared at the broken strap. "Is it just me or is nothing going right?"

"Nothing is going right," Cal confirmed with a snarl as he limped over to the toolbox of his own truck and snatched another ratchet strap out of it. He grabbed the strap and slung it over the wrecker with entirely more force than necessary. David cringed as he ducked to avoid being hit in the head with the ratcheting end.

Gracie swallowed the lump in her throat as she looked back toward Cal. He ignored her and focused all his attention on the wrecker. He was checking the winch on the front of the flatbed with deft gestures that spoke of a practiced competence. They had used the winch to pull the heaviest pieces of the car up to the front of the flat bed. It saved on hard labor, when the winch worked.

"I'm just hoping this blasted winch survives the day." Cal's dark brows were drawn together and he was scowling at the spooled metal cable. "I can't just keep duct taping and zip tying this thing back together."

"I know. I know." David finished checking the straps and walked back around the front of the truck. "Look, if you can keep it working until we get rid of this damned car, I'll buy a brand new one, okay?"

"Really?" The surprise in Cal's expression was understandable. David was a notorious cheapskate. He tended to wait to replace things until they literally disintegrated in his hands.

"Swear to God." David crossed himself.

"Let's get moving." Cal smiled for the first time all day. And then he caught sight of Gracie standing a few steps behind David and his facial expression turned cold.

She knew how bad she must look, standing in the middle of the yard wearing one of Addison's button down shirts and a pair of David's ratty old work jeans. She'd washed her bra and underwear in the sink. They were cold and clammy against her skin when she put them back on. She prayed fervently that the dark color of the shirt hid whatever moisture might have soaked into the fabric from her wet bra.

"Cal," she was barely aware she'd spoken his name out loud. "Please, if you'll just listen?"

"I don't care," he told her flatly as he brushed her away. "I don't want to hear whatever excuses you want to tell me to make yourself feel better."

David sighed in irritation. "We don't have time for this. We need to get moving."

"I'm waiting on you." Cal was limping noticeably as he started to walk around to the passenger's side of the wrecker. He paused near the front of the cab. He jerked his chin at Gracie."Tell me she's not going with us."

"She stays." David yanked his cellphone out of his pocket and tossed it to Gracie. "If I call you from Cal's phone, answer it. Otherwise, don't touch it."

"I have my phone." She was fighting a fresh batch of tears that kept threatening to spill out of her eyes and down her cheeks. She couldn't afford to cry right now. David had already been very clear about how important it was to get rid of all evidence that Brett had ever existed before anyone realized he was missing.

"Yeah, don't answer yours either." David opened the driver's side door of the tow truck. "Not until I think of something to tell people. In the meantime, stay put."

"Okay." Gracie was shaking so hard she had to stuff the phone into her pocket in order to avoid dropping it. It wasn't lost on her that David and Cal were risking everything to protect her. They were putting their own lives and futures on the line to fix a mess she had created. David knew the chance he was taking, but Cal wouldn't let them explain. He was risking everything because David had asked him to. He didn't even know why.

"Let's go before Kerry does a drive-by and decides to ask questions," Cal snapped at David.

"That's the last damn thing we need." David flicked up his middle finger in the direction of the highway at an imaginary Sheriffs' office patrol car and climbed into the cab of the wrecker. "Behave yourself, Gracie. Make sure to keep that phone where you can hear it."

"I will," she promised.

He put the big diesel in gear and headed down the dirt driveway with the evidence of the very worse of Gracie's sins on display for all the world to see.

### Chapter 28

"Ten bucks says they never score." Ian McIntyre dangled the bill over the cheap plastic table, directly in front of Addison's nose.

"Keep it. I've got fifty saying they'll win." Addison was stretched back in a plastic chair. He had his muddy, beat-up boots kicked up onto the table. He was smoking a cigarette directly underneath the 'No Smoking' sign that had been taped to the concrete block wall behind him.

Kerry scooted his own plastic chair as far away from Addison as he could get without actually leaving the table. He was tired, sweaty, and his asthma couldn't handle Addison's nicotine addiction. Addison Malone chain-smoked. Easily two packs a day. The gray Ford truck he'd been issued by the county smelled like an ashtray.

Kerry had spent the first half of the morning dealing with Reggie Gunther and his furious wife. The second half of the morning had been spent sitting in his squad car, sucking on his inhaler. Of all the problems Kerry had anticipated struggling with when he became a police officer; his cigarette smoke allergy hadn't been at the top of his list. Unfortunately, it was rapidly becoming a real issue. He was either going to have to convince Sheriff Chasson to follow the state laws that banned smoking in public buildings, or he was going to have to go back to the doctor and request a stronger prescription for his inhaler. His bet was on the prescription.

Richard Perkins, senior officer for the Callahan County Sheriff's Office, let out a loud snort as he settled himself on the opposite end of the table from Addison and Ian. Perkins was somewhere in his 50s, balding, severely overweight and waiting out his retirement. His uniform stretching to the limits over his bulging gut as he sat down. "Giving money away again, Addison?"

"No, I just have faith in Coach Sanford." He took a deep drag on the cigarette and turned his head directly to the left so the smoke he exhaled went directly into Kerry's face. Kerry tried not to breathe and hoped he wouldn't have to bolt to his car for his inhaler before the end of his first official staff meeting.

"You're an idiot then." Perkins laughed. He cast a sideways glance at Ian. "Let's take him up on his bet. I'll put in $25 in if you will."

"Deal." Ian grinned and titled back in his seat so that he could shake Perkins' hand. "I'm all for easy money."

Addison shook his head and tried to look insulted. Kerry sighed under his breath. Gambling in the Sheriff's office. Just another sign of the professionalism that characterized the Callahan County Sheriff's Department. Addison puffed another cloud of smoke at Kerry. Kerry lost his battle against the cough that had been building up inside his chest. He was hacking up a lung when the Sheriff walked into the room.

"You going to make it, Kerry?" Frank Chasson was a shorter, fatter version of his nephew. He had the same bright turquoise-colored eyes that his sister had passed on to Addison. Sheriff Chasson had enough sense to keep his graying curls cut in a military buzz. His black cowboy hat was battered, beaten, and easily 10 years older than Kerry was. The hat hadn't done a very good job at protecting the Sheriff's skin from the sun. The man looked like beef jerky stuffed in a button down Columbia fishing shirt and Wranglers.

Kerry opened his mouth to reassure the sheriff that he was fine but another spurt of coughing made him nearly double over in his chair.

"Maybe Addy should put the cigarette out." Ian shoved an empty soda can towards his friend.

Addison raised an eyebrow at Ian. "What for?"

"Because I think you're killing him." Ian jerked his thumb at Kerry, who was coughing too hard to agree but would have if he'd had any breath left in his lungs. Addison studied Kerry contemplatively and rolled the lit cigarette between his fingertips.

"Addison, I think Ian might have a point." Frank Chasson shook his head at Addy and made a dropping motion towards the soda can. "Put it out, son."

"Fine," Addison said. He dropped the lit cigarette into the can and scowled at Kerry. "Happy?"

Kerry nodded, but he couldn't catch his breath. "Need." Cough. Cough. "My inhaler."

"I reckon go get it," Frank Chasson said with a sigh. Kerry stood up, still coughing, and headed for the front door. As he gasped his way out into the parking lot, he could hear the rest of them laughing behind his back.

### Chapter 29

"Where are we taking all this stuff?" Cal broke the uncomfortable silence that had filled the wrecker for the last 30 minutes.

"I'm thinking Gleeson's Salvage." David chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip.

"You serious?" Cal looked at him in surprised disgust. "I hate dealing with Shane Gleeson. He's a crook."

"Can't risk anyone finding so much as single piece of that car. Shane doesn't look at the shit he takes in before he melts it down."

"Shane is stoned out of his gourd. He wouldn't know what he had if he did look through every single piece of this load."

"Precisely." David bared his teeth in an expression that was supposed to be a smile but wasn't. Cal tapped his fingers against the arm rest. He'd been quiet for most of the ride. Too quiet, even for Cal. They sat in an uncomfortable silence and watched trees go by on the side of the road.

"How bad are we talking about here?" Cal asked. "I mean, if someone say, picks up that engine and finds a VIN number you didn't file off?"

"Bad." David gnawed on his lip and stared ahead through the windshield. He didn't want to have this conversation with Cal. Not now. Not ever.

"Define bad." Cal pushed the issue.

"Prison," David admitted. "For a long fucking time."

Cal cursed under his breath. "You can't keep doing this shit, David."

"I'm not trying to, believe me." He was exhausted. "You think I want to spend my Saturday morning hauling around pieces of a stolen car and dodging a lousy cop who's hell bent on revenge?

"You don't get it." Cal shook his head, his jaw was locked in a tight line. "You're never going to get it. You're always reckless. You never care about the consequences."

"I care about the consequences," David didn't care for the implications Cal was making. "You don't know how damn much I care about the consequences."

"You care about Gracie?" Cal turned in his seat so that his eyes were bearing into David. If looks could kill, David would have been dead in the driver's seat and he knew it. David bit his tongue before he said something he'd regret.

"Yes," he said. "I care about Gracie."

"Why are you here?" Cal made a gesture at the interior of the wrecker. "The shop's doing more business than you can keep up with. Your house is paid off. Your shop is paid off. You play like you're broke, but I know damned well that you've got as much money in the bank as I do."

"What's your point?" David snapped. He didn't appreciate where the conversation was going but he was pretty sure this wasn't the ideal time to set Cal straight. He couldn't afford any more broken bones. His nose hurt bad enough as is.

"My point is that you've got it all, including my goddamn girlfriend. Why are you here?" Cal practically spat the words at him. "Why are you hauling around stolen cars and risking going to prison when you have nothing to gain from it?"

"Because I have to." David clenched the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned white. "Me and Gracie, it's not what you think."

"We aren't talking about you and Gracie. All you're going to tell me is lies, David. Don't bother. I know you too well." David started to argue, but Cal held up one hand and gestured for him to shut up. David didn't figure he had too many options, so he shut up.

"I don't want to know the details about how you and Gracie discovered you were fucking soul mates. I love her, David. I've always loved her and I'm always going to love her. If she's picked you over me, I'm going to have to live with her decision. It doesn't make me happy, but I've got to deal with that."

"She hasn't picked-." David was getting tired of being accused of lying when he was telling as much of the truth as he could. Or trying to anyway.

"Shut up and let me finish," Cal slammed his fist into the dashboard of the truck, cracking it. "If you get Gracie tied up in your bullshit, I'm never going to forgive you. Never. If you get her thrown in jail because you get a cheap thrill out of stealing cars or you wanted to make a couple of extra bucks, I'll never forgive you. You're my best friend and you're like a brother to me. Hell, my parents raised you. I'll never forgive you if you go down and you take Gracie with you."

"I'll do anything in my power to protect Gracie." David bit his lip so hard it bled. "If you would just fucking listen-."

Cal cut him off again, he pointed to a narrow road that could barely been seen off the side of the highway. "Turn up here on the left."

"We can check your trail camera on the way back," David didn't slow the truck.

"Shane Gleeson's lazy. It could be weeks before he melts this load down. You want to leave that high dollar engine laying around that pigsty of Shane's and hope everyone out there is too high to notice you rubbed grease and dirt all over it to make it look old."

"You have a better idea?" David took his foot off the accelerator. The big truck immediately began to slow.

"I've got a better plan," Cal put heavy emphasis on the last word. "Turn onto the lease."

David turned the wrecker onto the lease. As he slowed to a stop in front of the gate, Cal got out of the truck and unfastened the rusty padlock using the key he always kept on his key ring. He opened the gate and waved for David to drive the wrecker onto the muddy trail that lead deep into the depths of the hunting lease his grandpappy owned.

David eased the truck past the gate and onto the trail. Cal locked the gate behind them and climbed back into the passenger seat. "You might want to go ahead and put it in four-wheel drive."

"What exactly are we planning to do here?" David put the truck in neutral and engaged the four-wheel drive lever.

"Remember a few weeks back when we got all that rain?" Cal gestured for David to move towards the right side of the trail. David knew it lead down into the depths of an old, almost impassible area of swamp.

"Yeah." David eased the truck back into gear and took his foot off the brake.

"The ground got real soft and one of those huge old cypress trees at the edge of the water came all the way out of the ground."

David waited for Cal to make his point. Cal stayed quiet as the big truck eased down under the tight canopy. The tree branches scratched down the sides of the metal body, making David glad he'd never gotten around to giving the wrecker a more attractive paint job.

"Pappy wanted to use the tree. It was real nice wood. He had me bring the trackhoe down here and get it," Cal smirked at David. "He told me to make sure to fill in the hole after I got the tree out."

"You ain't got that hole filled in yet, do you?" David smiled his first real smile all day.

"Nope. But I'm sure Pappy will be pleased to see that I used my Saturday off of work to get it done."

"I just bet he will be," David agreed.

### Chapter 30

"I'm pretty sure I could catch these guys if I blocked off their access points, you know?" Addison had lit another cigarette in Kerry's absence and the conference room was more or less filled with smoke by the time Kerry managed to stop coughing enough to come back inside.

He paused just inside the door-frame, his inhaler still in his right hand. He noticed that Frank Chasson had bummed one of the cigarettes off of Addison. Instead of lighting it, the Sheriff had opted to chew the filter into a papery nub. He winked when Kerry coughed slightly to announce his own presence.

"Welcome back, now that you've missed our weekly staff meeting." Frank Chasson scowled at Kerry and tugged on the ends of his mustache. "I hope you don't mind that we went on and had our meeting without you. Don't have all day to sit around here running our yaps."

"I understand." Kerry wasn't happy to have missed the staff meeting, but it seemed like a waste of time to complain to the Sheriff that the Sheriff had not waited on him to come back before starting the meeting. He'd only been gone 10 minutes. "It must have been a short meeting."

"Not a whole lot going on around here." Richard Perkins was playing with a little ball of notebook paper, tossing it from hand to hand. "Most of what does go on around here won't concern you anyway, Deputy Longwood."

Kerry opened his mouth and then closed it again. He didn't quite know what to make of the man's statement. It was overwhelmingly clear that he was the outsider here and would always be the outsider, even if he did manage to keep his badge more than two weeks.

"You coming in or are you just going to stand there holding up that door frame all day?" Perkins asked him.

"Someone needs to open a window or turn on the vent fan to let some of the smoke out of here." Kerry had to struggle to keep from coughing again. "I can't breathe with all this cigarette smoke."

"How did you pass your physical?" Addison asked condescendingly.

"How did you pass yours?" Kerry countered.

"I can run a three-minute mile," Addison replied. He held his arms out in a wide shrug. "I'm a beast. Can't help it."

"You're a beast all right." Ian rolled his eyes and laughed. His tone made Kerry think there was some kind of inside joke concealed in his words. Addison, Sheriff Chasson and Perkins laughed.

"You're going on duty with Addison and Ian tonight." Sheriff Chasson cut the laughter short as he spoke directly to Kerry. "Addison's been having a poaching problem. He feels like he could catch the poachers if he had more manpower."

"Poaching problem?" Kerry repeated the words slowly, out loud.

"Yeah, you know, hunters shooting deer out of season. It's illegal. We try to arrest those guys." Addison explained as if he were talking to an extraordinarily dumb toddler.

"I understand the concept," Kerry clarified. "I'm just not sure what you think I'm going to be able to do about it."

Addison started to open his mouth but the Sheriff beat him to it. "We was figuring you could use all that fancy schooling to teach us a thing or two about how we do our jobs, right boys?" Sheriff Chasson smiled unkindly at Kerry. "I know how you've said you want revolutionize law enforcement here in Callahan County. I figure this is a great chance for you to show us how you get it done. Addison has been trying to catch them poachers for weeks with no luck. I'm hoping you can use all them skills they taught you in college to get those assholes locked up where they belong."

Kerry choked on his own saliva, which brought on another round of coughing. Addison sighed and put his cigarette out in the same soda can that had consumed the previous one. "As much as I'm sure I have a lot to learn from our esteemed colleague here, I don't think he's going to make it too far in law enforcement if he can't go five minutes without hacking up a lung."

"We really can't take him with us tonight if he keeps coughing, Frank." Ian sounded less smug than Addison. "We aren't going to be able to sneak up on anyone with him coughing the way he is."

"You going to live through the night, Crybaby? I mean, Kerry?" Frank Chasson made no attempt to disguise the annoyance in his voice. "Or do I need to send you to the walk-in clinic in Canterville?"

"Sorry, I'll be fine once I get out of here." Kerry struggled to catch his breath again. "I have asthma. I can't be around smoke."

"You realize you see a lot of smoke when you work in law enforcement?" Frank asked.

"Actually, I'm pretty sure it's illegal to be smoking in the sheriff's department." Kerry was getting tired of coughing and even more tired of putting up with everyone's abuse. He needed to get outside and back into the fresh air or he really wasn't going to be able to work tonight. He wondered what would happen if he spent his entire trial period on sick leave due to his asthma. He bet the Sheriff would use it as an excuse to hire Ian.

"I wasn't referring to inside our offices, son." Sheriff Chasson ignored the implications of Kerry's words. "I was referring to the house and brush fires we respond to, as well as the fires that start at car accidents. Not to mention the fights that start up in bars. Bars are real smoky, Kerry. People smoke in their homes too. We go to a lot of smoky homes, for sure."

"I'll talk to my doctor about my prescription." Kerry wished he could have said the words without wheezing.

"You do that," Frank Chasson told him. He waved his hand in a half-arc and disappeared from the conference room. Addison pulled yet another cigarette out of the pack he was carrying and lit it. Kerry turned and walked out of the room.

### Chapter 31

"We have a problem." Cal sounded out of breath even through the lousy cellphone connection. Gracie's heart dropped clear down through her stomach. Her hands were shaking so badly she had to struggle to keep from dropping the phone.

"Oh my God, what happened? Are you okay?" She had expected them to be back by now. Every minute she'd been alone had been agonizing. Gracie couldn't seem to think of anything other than worst case scenarios. She'd envisioned everything from Kerry pulling them over and arresting them to Brett coming back to life and killing her for what she had done to him.

"We're fine. Don't panic. The wrecker blew the top hose off the radiator. David wants you to bring my truck down here and tow us back to the house." Cal told her.

"The wrecker broke down?" Gracie repeated his words with a sense of relief.

"Yeah. Maybe now I can talk David into buying a new one."

"David is never going to buy a new wrecker," Gracie said the first thing that popped into her mouth. Cal laughed and for half a second Gracie almost forgot how bad things had gotten between the two of them.

Cal stopped laughing abruptly, as if he too had just remembered their situation. "My keys are in the ignition. It doesn't have enough gas in it to get all the way out here, but my credit card is in the ashtray. You remember the pin?"

"My birthday?" Gracie couldn't hide her surprise.

"Yeah," Cal sounded almost embarrassed. "We're out here at the back gate of the lease. Off South Springer Road. You remember how to get here?"

"Of course I do." Gracie grabbed her purse off the kitchen counter and headed for the front door. "I'll see you in about 30 minutes."

"Be careful," Cal said. He seemed on the verge of saying something more and for a moment she held her breath and waited. She'd have given anything to hear him tell her that he loved her right now, though she doubted she'd ever hear him say those words to her again.

He hung up the phone without saying anything else and Gracie let out the breath she had been holding.

She took his advice to be careful to heart as she slid behind the wheel of the Chevy. The old truck started the moment she turned the key.

### Chapter 32

Jo Beth was less than two miles from David's house when Cal's Chevy roared past her going in the opposite direction. Jo took her foot off the accelerator and waited to see the flash of brake lights in her rear view mirror when Cal realized he had just driven past her. Instead, the big truck gained speed. It was rapidly disappearing from view when Jo did a u-turn in the middle of the road and chased after it.

She reached for her phone, which was resting in the center console. Cal had promised he would call her when he got done at David's, but her phone wasn't showing any missed calls. She frowned at the screen and then pressed the touchscreen to bring up her list of recent calls. Cal's name was at the top of the list. She'd already tried to call him twice today. She'd decided to bring him lunch while he was working on his truck as a peace offering, an apology of sorts, for what she had said to him last night. She'd called him to find out whether he would rather have turkey and Swiss cheese or roast beef sandwiches. His phone had sent her straight to voicemail both times.

Now she dialed his number again. Obviously he was angrier with her than she had anticipated. Cal always answered his phone or called right back. This time the phone rang twice and then went to voicemail. Jo cursed under her breath and focused her attention on catching up to Cal's truck. He must not have noticed her car when he had passed her. A glance down at the speedometer revealed she was going nearly 80 miles per hour as she struggled to catch up with the truck. He had to be going at least 70 mph. The speed limit was only 45 mph.

Jo Beth was rapidly closing the distance between her little Hyundai and the truck's thick back pipe bumper. She flashed her headlights at him and eased her foot off of the accelerator. She expected him to slow the truck down once he noticed her driving up his tailgate. Suddenly the big truck belched a large cloud of blue-black smoke out the exhaust pipe and took off.

"What the heck?" Jo Beth reacted instinctively by crushing her own accelerator onto the floorboards. What was Cal thinking? Better yet, what was he _doing_?

Jo couldn't think of any reason in the world that would make Cal want avoid her like this. They'd had worse arguments than the one last night and they had talked the issues out like adults. She had been fully prepared to apologize again, complete with fully loaded deli-style sandwiches, homemade potato salad and a 12 pack of Coors light.

The truck suddenly jammed on the brakes and slid sideways onto a dirt road without the benefit of a blinker. Jo Beth slammed on her own brakes and cut her wheel as well. Her Hyundai slid neatly onto the dirt road, closing some of the distance between the truck and the car. The rear-wheel drive truck had fishtailed during the turn. Jo's car had not.

Jo Beth could see the Chevy hesitating between pulling over and gunning it again. Jo didn't care which method he tried. He'd picked a bad road to try to lose her on. It dead-ended in a swamp six miles down the road.

Apparently Cal was having the same thoughts because the truck snatched abruptly off the dirt and onto the grassy shoulder of the road with a puff of dust.

Jo had to turn her wheel hard to the left to avoid rear-ending him. She pulled off the road behind the Chevy. She had the driver's side door open almost before she had the car in park.

Temper flaring, Jo stormed towards the front of the Chevy. She rapidly wrote off any plans she'd had for being extra nice to Cal. The whole sweet girlfriend bringing sandwiches and beer routine didn't work when said girlfriend had to chase you down the road.

"Why didn't you pull over when I flashed you?" Jo demanded, marching towards the truck as the driver's side window rolled down.

"I really didn't feel like talking to you." Gracie was sitting in the driver's seat of the Chevy with a bottle of Coke between her thighs and a bag of potato chips lying on the seat beside her. The three hundred dollar sportsman sunglasses Jo had bought for Cal on his birthday were concealing her turquoise eyes.

Jo cast a glance to the passenger seat and saw her own back-up toiletries bag had been raided. Her hairbrush was sitting on the seat next to Gracie's bag of chips. She squinted at Gracie's face. "Are you wearing my lip gloss?" she asked, stunned almost beyond belief.

"Oh. Yeah. Sorry." Gracie shrugged. She didn't look sorry. "You know, I wouldn't have thought I could pull off this shade of peach, but it really doesn't look too bad." Gracie focused her attention on her own reflection in the side-view mirror.

"You can keep it," Jo Beth scowled at the other girl. "Where's Cal?"

"With David," Gracie answered the question little too quickly for Jo's tastes.

"At the house?" Jo didn't know what was going on, but something definitely wasn't right.

"Uh." Gracie hesitated then shook her head no. "I don't know where they went."

"Cal told me that he and David were redoing the brakes on this truck today. Obviously, that's not happening if you're driving around in the truck they are supposed to be fixing."

"I guess not." Gracie shrugged her slender shoulders. Jo Beth noted that Gracie was wearing a guy's navy blue button down shirt. She wondered briefly if either of the Malone siblings had considered wearing their own clothes. Or their own make-up. Yuck.

Jo shot Gracie the nastiest look she could muster. "Let's try this again. Where's Cal?"

Gracie shrugged again. "No idea. Why don't you call him?"

"I have." Jo felt increasingly embarrassed with every minute that passed. "His phone is turned off. Every time I've called him my calls have gone straight to voicemail."

"I guess he doesn't want to talk to you." Gracie crossed her arms over her chest. She hadn't cut the engine off when she had pulled over. The smell of the truck's exhaust was starting to give Jo Beth a headache. She really wished Cal would trade-in this damned truck.

Of course, she had a pretty strong suspicion that Cal's truck wasn't going to be her problem very much longer. It probably wasn't even her problem right now. She narrowed her eyes at her boyfriend's first true love and ex-girlfriend. "I don't like being made a fool of, Gracie."

"What are you trying to say?"

"I don't believe you when you say don't know where my boyfriend is." Jo hated every word that was coming out of her own mouth. "You wouldn't be driving around in his truck if you didn't have some idea of where he was."

"I already told you, he's with David. They had to go do something. I didn't ask what."

"And you have the truck, why?"

"I wanted a Coke. David doesn't have anything in the house but beer."

Jo Beth considered Gracie's story for a minute and then shook her own head. "Nice try, you're going the wrong direction for the store."

Gracie grimaced.

Jo waited.

The wind blew a giant puff of dusty dirt road all over them.

"Oops." Gracie put her hands back on the steering wheel. "Look Jo, Cal knows I have his truck. I didn't steal it, if that's what you're thinking.

"Oh, I'm sure he does know." Jo tried and failed to conceal the hurt in her own voice as she fought back her tears. Beneath her immediate anger, she was incredibly hurt. "I'm not an idiot, Gracie. I know how much Cal still cares about you, even though you broke up with him and broke his heart. I don't doubt for a minute that he'd take you back in an instant. I just think it's bullshit that he didn't have the decency to be honest with me."

Gracie had the decency to shift uncomfortably in the worn out seat. "I don't know what you're talking about, Jo. Maybe you need to talk to Cal."

"I would, if I could find him." Jo practically spat the words at her. "Do me a favor, tell him to call me. I'm sure you'll hear from him before I do.

Jo turned her heel and walked back to her little car with tears burning her eyelids. Cal had turned off his phone and Gracie had his truck. Clearly there wasn't too much more that Jo Beth needed to take up with Cal. The writing was already scratched in the dust on the side of a beat-up Chevy.

### Chapter 33

"You could have at least had the decency to tell me the truth about where Cal was last night," Jo's words were laced with hurt as she stood in the Gas 'N Go parking lot and glared at Addison.

He frowned at her with complete and genuine confusion, taking in her flushed cheeks and dark sunglasses. She was wearing a cute little pink checked tank top that gave a nice view of her cleavage. The shirt had wrinkled up on her stomach and was currently exposing part of her stomach as well.

As usual, he had absolutely no idea why she was so pissed off at him. He'd thought they had actually parted on good terms the previous night following the demise of Amelia Baxter's pet raccoon.

Of course, he'd known he was in for it when Jo had cut an illegal u-turn in the middle of the road as soon as she'd spotted his truck at the pumps. Now she had him blocked in with that little car of hers, and all he could think about was the pink gun he now knew she was deadly accurate with.

"I don't know what you're talking about." He leaned back against the truck and flashed his bright, Uncle Sam enhanced pearly whites. Girls usually liked a nice smile.

"The truth, Addison. I'd like the truth from you. Just once."

"I don't normally lie to you," he admitted without enthusiasm. "There's no point in it. I'm a lousy liar and you'd talk to whoever it was you needed to talk to and find out the truth of it anyways." Addison ripped the cellophane off of the new package of ever-present cigarettes he had just bought, pulled one out and lit it. He full well knew his smoking would only make Jo madder. "Now why don't you try telling me what you're talking about?"

She glared at him for a moment and then snatched the pack of cigarettes out of his hand.

"Hey-!"

"You can have them back when you admit that you knew damn well why Cal ditched me last night after dinner." Jo dangled the cigarettes above the gas station trash can.

"Do what?" Addison considered snatching the cigarettes back from her and then decided his odds of managing it without being kicked in the balls with one of her sparkly, sequined flip-flops were pretty much slim to none.

"The truth, Addison." She crossed her arms over her generously endowed chest. Addison wondered why he'd never noticed that Jo had a really nice rack before today.

"Oh, and stop staring at my boobs."

Addison blinked and looked away quickly. It was unnatural how quickly she could read him.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he told her after gathering his thoughts for a minute. It was the truth. He just didn't know how to make her believe him. Addison had never admitted it out loud but Jo's tendency to always automatically assume the worst when he was involved was the real reason he wanted Cal to break up with her.

"Bullshit, Addy."

"Jo, I was up all night. You know that because you were with me." Addison rubbed his eyes and leaned back against his county-issue Ford. He jerked his thumb towards the bed of the truck. "Our friend is still back there in a cooler because I haven't gotten the chance to take him to Doc Morrison's place for his state-mandated rabies check. After you left last night I went home, slept for three hours and then got called back out for a possum in Arnie Hobb's bathroom followed by Reggie Gunther getting his wife's truck stuck out in Boggy Bayou. It took me two hours to get the truck out.

I just left a meeting down at the Sheriff's office and right now all I want is to finish this cigarette and then maybe get some sleep in the cab of my truck before the sun sets and the damn alien poaching calls start up again. I haven't seen Cal since I left y'all last night. I haven't seen my phone in almost 24 hours. I don't have the slightest fucking clue what you're talking about right now."

Jo fingered his pack of cigarettes thoughtfully and then sighed. He could see the majority of the anger fading as they stood facing one another. "Okay. Fine. If I have to break it down to you, so be it. Last night, you came and interrupted our date night. You and Cal stood outside talking by your truck for almost 45 minutes before you took the engagement ring he'd bought for me out of his glove box and left."

"Right."

"What were y'all talking about?"

Addison frowned at her, baffled as to where she was going with this. "You really want to know?"

"Would I be asking if I didn't?"

Addison considered for a moment then decided he didn't see any real harm in telling her. "You remember a guy named Kerry from high school?"

"What?"

"Kerry Long-something?"

She nodded. "Longwood."

"He wants to be a Sheriff's Deputy. Me and Ian don't want him to be. Well, actually I don't think Ian cares if Kerry gets hired. It's just that if Kerry gets hired then Ian won't be hired. We don't want Kerry to get hired. I was asking Cal if he'd help me figure out a way to screw up Kerry's trial period so that we can make sure Uncle Frank gives the job to Ian for sure."

Jo shot him a reproachful look. "Y'all are seriously planning on sabotaging Kerry?"

"Well, I probably shouldn't admit that but, yeah." Addison shrugged.

"You just told me the same thing Cal told me when I asked him." Jo stared down at the pavement with a troubled expression on her face.

"If you already asked Cal what we were talking about, then why are you asking me?" He wished she would get to the point already. He was dying for a nap.

"Because I'm pretty sure that somewhere in that conversation, you told Cal that Gracie was back in town."

"What?" Addison wondered if sleep deprivation could affect his hearing.

"It's the only thing that makes sense. You told Cal that Gracie was back in town and wanted him back. That's why he told you to take the ring." She was obviously upset. "He took me home and ditched me so he could go be with your little sister."

"Are you feeling okay?" Addison decided he had heard her right, but wondered if she was having a mental breakdown of some sort. "Because you totally just hallucinated everything past the part where I came to the diner."

"You're saying you had nothing to do with it?"

"I'm saying that I don't know what you're talking about." Addison gestured for her to hand him the cigarettes. "Gracie is still at college. She hasn't said a damn word to me about Cal in months, other than asking me if he's okay."

"Why is she driving around in his truck this morning?" Jo held the cigarettes just out of reach.

"Do what?" Addison was completely confused at this point.

"Gracie is driving around in Cal's truck." Jo couldn't keep the hurt from showing in her eyes. "I just saw her half an hour ago."

"Gracie's not supposed to be in town," Addison said after a pause. "If she is, Mom and Dad don't know about it. They would have said something to me if she were driving down from school for the weekend. Dad doesn't think the Camaro's transmission is going to make another 200-mile trip."

"You're trying to tell me you had absolutely no idea Gracie was in Possum Creek today?"

"You sure you're not seeing shit?" Addy asked.

"I talked to her." Jo unconsciously tightened her grip on the cigarettes. Addison reached out and pulled the box out of her hand before she crushed them flat. She didn't resist.

"Everything you are saying is news to me, Jo. I don't have any idea why Gracie would be back in town this weekend. Dad told her not to drive the Camaro back down unless it was a major holiday because he doesn't trust it. Our folks didn't have the money to buy her a new car and pay for her tuition."

"I didn't see her car when I went to David's. Who knows, maybe Cal went to pick her up last night? I don't know. All I can tell you is he wasn't where he was supposed to be last night and he's not where he's supposed to be right now either." Jo threw up her hands in exasperation. "Cal told me the whole reason he was going to David's this morning was to fix the brakes on the Chevy. Even that was a lie, because Gracie's driving around in the Chevy and there is no one at David's."

"Maybe they finished with it and took Gracie's car over to David's shop for something." Addy was grasping at straws, because none of what Jo was saying made any sense to him either.

"Locked up tight." Jo scowled at him.

"You already checked?" Addy blinked and wished briefly that his fellow law enforcement officers had Jo Beth's investigative skills. Maybe he wouldn't be on month four of chasing ghosts through the woods at all hours of the night.

She nodded. "I don't deserve this crap, Addison. I've been a good girlfriend to Cal. The least he could do is break up with me to my face before he took off with Gracie. If you happen to see him, you can tell him I said that." Addison thought he saw tears start to spill down her cheeks as she turned away from him and began walking towards her car.

Addison was at a real loss for words as she climbed into her car and drove away. She squealed the tires as she turned out of the parking lot.

"Women...can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em," a voice came from behind him.

He turned and found himself facing his Dad's best friend, Burt Simmons.

"What'd you do to get her panties all in a wad this time?" Burt asked him, smirking.

Addison sighed and shrugged. "I wish I knew," he said. "But I'm about to go find out."

He got in his truck and headed towards David's.

### Chapter 34

The look in Cal's eyes had told Gracie a lot of things as he got behind the wheel of his truck. He was covered head to toe in black swamp mud and in a foul mood. None of the unspoken words that passed between them were friendly.

Gracie pressed her head against the glass of the passenger's side window and closed her eyes. She felt Cal manually put the Chevy into first gear. The Chevy didn't budge and neither did the wrecker it was tied to. The back tires started to spin when Cal pressed down on the accelerator.

Cal muttered something nasty under his breath and engaged the four-wheel drive. The big truck started to inch forward in the thick mud, moving painfully slowly. Gracie stared hard at the pine trees outside the window. She knew from previous experience that the Chevy wasn't capable of going much faster than 35 miles per hour when the 3-ton wrecker was chained to it.

David's wrecker was 10 years older than Gracie was. It had occasional mechanical issues which David always claimed he didn't have the time to fix. Towing the wrecker was never exactly fun, but Gracie had never minded it too much in the past because she and Cal had always been able to just talk for hours about church, their friends, Addison's sex life, David's lack of a sex life, Granny Pearl's cooking, her mother, his Momma and whatever was currently going wrong at Walker Hardware.

Gracie desperately wanted to tell Cal about Brett. She'd been clinging to her pride for the last eight months, but she wasn't proud today. She was fully willing to take the blame for everything that had gone wrong between them. If only he would talk to her. Or smile at her. Or look at her.

He was staring straight ahead through the windshield, never taking his eyes off the ground in front of them. Even though they were driving through an open field with no obstacles ahead for at least another two miles.

"Your girlfriend is mad at you." Gracie owed it to him to warn him about what she'd said to Jo Beth.

"Nice." Cal's bulldog jaw was set in a tight line. He had mud covering him completely from the waist down. He made a half-hearted attempt to brush some of the mud off his arm as he tugged the gearshift up into second gear. "Nothing new there."

"It's my fault," Gracie admitted to him. This time Cal cast a flickering glance in her direction.

"What did you say to her?"

He knew her too well.

"Long version or short?" Gracie asked.

"Short is fine."

"I told her that if she wanted to know why I was driving your truck, she needed to take it up with you. She passed me when I was coming here. I guess she was headed to David's?" Gracie shrugged, well aware that she was babbling a little bit. "She chased me down the road. When I finally did have to pull over, she demanded to know where you were. I didn't know what to tell her. I mean, I couldn't exactly tell her..."

"Yeah, no. You can't tell her that I'm off helping David get rid of a car he stole. She'd call the cops in a heartbeat."

"Last thing we need right now."

"Agreed. I'll deal with her when we get back to town." Cal sighed as he sped the truck up a little bit. "Look Gracie, we need to talk."

"I know." Gracie took a deep breath and blinked back tears. "About last night. David. You need to know-.."

"How well do you think you know David?" Cal countered, cutting her off mid-sentence.

"What?" Gracie blinked at him, surprised.

"David. I asked you how well you think you know David. Because I know David too damn well." Cal scowled at her across the cab of the truck.

"It's David..." Gracie really had no idea where he was going with this. Cal had never been anything but David's biggest advocate. Cal was the one who defended David against anyone who had the nerve to say a bad word. "He's your best friend. Practically your brother. He's Addison's friend. I've known him as long as I've known you. What are you asking?"

Cal shook his head for a minute, his curly dark black hair fell briefly across his eyes. He immediately pushed it back with a ball cap that he picked up off the dashboard. He gestured back towards the wrecker. "I don't know. I guess I'm asking if you're really okay with this?"

"This?" Gracie chewed on the inside of her lip nervously, wondering what story David had told Cal about the BMW if he hadn't told him the truth.

"Yeah. This. Or did you miss that your boyfriend and I," Cal nearly choked on the words as they came out of his mouth, "just dumped a stolen car? Not the first stolen car either. Not by a long shot."

Gracie frowned at him. "I know David's Dad ran a chop shop, Cal. That's old news."

"David is running a chop shop. I thought he'd quit with the stolen cars, but I guess he lied to me when he told me he'd gone completely legal," Cal said flatly. "Chopping up stolen property is illegal as hell. He gets caught, he's going to prison. Prison. You might want to think about that before you throw your lot in with his."

Gracie opened her mouth in surprise and then blinked at him and closed it again. "You've thrown your lot in with him. You've helped him get rid of the cars on more than one occasion. I know you have. Don't tell me today is a fluke. You and Addison are both in on it. Y'all have been doing this for years."

"Okay. Fine. I don't deny it." Cal wasn't making excuses for his behavior. He never did. Even when he was guilty as hell and an excuse would have appropriate. "Just wanting to make sure you're on the same page as we are."

"I've always been on the same page as you," Gracie narrowed her eyes at him, stung and feeling more than slightly insulted. A very familiar irritation was burning its way up through her veins, despite the trauma of the last 24 hours.

"No," Cal shook his head. "No, you haven't. You've never gotten your hands dirty. I always made sure you weren't on the front line of any of the stupid shit we've done."

"And your point would be?" Gracie crossed her arms over her chest.

"David's in too deep and I'm not sure you realize what you're getting into. You've always had a habit of jumping in with both feet without bothering to see how deep the water is."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that David is my best friend, but I'm not going to be able to protect you if you get in too deep with him, Gracie. David's not just bending the laws. He's breaking them into a million pieces. He goes down and you're with him, then you're going to go down too. There won't be anything Addison or I can do about it."

"David hasn't done anything wrong. Not by me, anyway." An image of Brett's corpse lying on the back seat of the BMW kept flashing against the backs of Gracie's eyelids. She shuddered without meaning to and Cal took the gesture personally.

"I've always tried my damnedest to protect you, Gracie. You know I've always done everything in my power to keep you safe and happy." Cal took a deep breath and tightened his grip on the steering wheel until the plastic made a cracking sound under his palms. "And you've thrown it all back in my face."

"What?" Gracie stared at him in shock, stung by his words. She wondered if David had told him about Brett. It was the only thing she could think of that would explain his anger.

"You said you wanted something more than Possum Creek, Gracie. I could understand that, I guess. I hate it, but I understand wanting to go to college. I understand getting a degree and going somewhere more exciting than here. Want to take a guess at what I don't understand?" Cal glared at her angrily as he gunned the accelerator. The truck achieved a less than breathtaking 30 miles an hour as they turned off the lease and onto the highway heading back towards David's trailer.

"I thought maybe you'd understand," she whispered. It was all she could do to keep from bursting in tears.

"Understand?" Cal practically spit the word at her. "You're getting a cheap thrill out of sleeping with my best friend and you expect me to understand?"

"What?" Gracie jerked her head up in surprise and stared at him. She'd thought he'd been talking about Brett. About David hiding Brett's body and getting rid of the car. Not about sex. He was still talking about the damned sex. "I am not getting a cheap thrill out of sleeping with David."

"Then what the hell are you doing, Gracie?" Cal glared at her. "You told me you wanted a change. You told me you needed some excitement in your life that you just couldn't seem to get here in Possum Creek. And then you left for college, and I made myself fucking deal with losing you. Hell, I tried to be nice about it. Until last night when I discovered that you weren't really looking for a change of scenery. Just a change of boyfriends."

"You're being ridiculous," Gracie snapped at him, unable to stop the anger she felt from bleeding into her words. Cal could be a real asshole when he wanted to be.

He was in fine form today.

"You could have saved us all a lot of hassle. You could have just told me you'd rather be with David than me. You didn't have to leave town and then sneak back to be with him."

"I am not sneaking around with David."

"What are you doing?"

"Why do you care?" Gracie countered. "It's obvious you've come to your own conclusions and made your own decisions without bothering to stop and ask for my input. As usual."

"I'm not the one who was caught without their clothes on last night."

"It's none of your business who I sleep with!" Gracie practically shouted at him.

"Damn right it's not. Not anymore."

"No. Not since _you_ broke up with _me_ ," Gracie was so angry she barely took the time to register the surprised expression on Cal's face as he turned the Chevy into David's driveway. He had to slam on the brakes to avoid driving straight into the tailgate of Addison's gray Ford.

Gracie jerked open the passenger's side door of the Chevy and jumped out as soon as the truck stopped moving. A fresh batch of tears threatened to spill down her cheeks as she came face to face with her big brother and flung herself into his arms.

"Okay, which one of you assholes hurt my baby sister and made her cry?" Addison wrapped his arms tightly around Gracie, pulling her into his muscular chest as he glared at Cal.

"Don't look at me like that," Cal shook his head at Addy. "She's made her own damned mess this time. I'm out of it. I'm done. Done. What she and David want to do is their own business. I've said my peace."

"What she and David do?" Addison blinked in confusion and loosened his grip on Gracie so he could look her in the eye.

"It wasn't David," Gracie sniffled. "Cal's being an asshole."

"Did I miss something here?" He sounded irritated and Gracie frowned at him, noticing that his blonde hair was damp and his shirt was almost completely soaked in sweat. Addison released Gracie completely as he gestured at the mud that was coating David, Cal and both trucks. "Because I must have missed something. Like where the hell y'all have been and what the fuck are y'all up to?"

"Don't ask," Cal snapped.

"Practicing our mud wrestling," David's tone was deceptively casual as he walked around the front of the wrecker with the tow rope he had just disconnected in his right hand. "I blew the radiator hauling off some parts I needed to get rid of. Ended up getting stuck in the mud. Cal had to come pull me out." David stared Addy straight in the eyes as if he were daring him to question the excuse.

"That's almost believable." Addison kicked casually at the sandy soil. "Except Jo Beth already blew that cover story when she cornered me at the Gas 'N Go and told me all about how Gracie was driving around in the Chevy all by herself this morning and neither you or Cal were anywhere to be found."

"Oh. Nice." David shook his head and turned to Cal. "Have I mentioned lately how much I don't like your girlfriend?"

"I don't think it's going to be a long term issue," Cal snapped back. "Pretty sure I'm probably single by now."

"That's an improvement." David stripped his muddy shirt off and tossed it straight onto the hood of Cal's truck. "Maybe now you'll have enough spare time to hook a winch to your head and pull it out of your ass, since you're not going to be spending all your time kissing Jo Beth's butt cheeks."

"Holy shit." Addison actually took a step backwards and did a double take at the two of them. "What the hell has gotten into y'all? Who broke your nose?" Addison had zeroed in on David's broken nose and two black eyes.

David jerked his chin in Cal's direction as he turned on the hose and began rinsing the mud off his legs. "Who do you think?"

"My first guess would be Jo Beth. But I know that's wrong, because she just spent thirty minutes chewing me out because she couldn't find Cal to chew him out." Addison crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head at them, waiting on someone to talk. "A little explanation would be really nice here, people. The Cliff Notes version, because I'm on duty and my radio hasn't been quiet for more than 20 minutes in the last 7 hours."

"Gracie's sleeping with David," Cal announced. "How's that for a Cliff Notes version?"

Gracie cringed at the snarly tone of Cal's voice. Addison's jaw hit the ground.

"What?" Addy snapped. All signs of joking around and good humor were gone in an instant.

"It's not-." Gracie started to protest but Cal cut her off.

"Guess they didn't bother telling you either?" Cal asked Addison. "I'll go ahead and make a really long story really short: I walked in on them half naked and all over one another in the middle of the living room last night."

"You've got to be kidding me." Addison looked from Cal to Gracie to David and then back to Cal again. "That's why you broke his nose."

Cal pulled the hose out of David's grasp and turned it on his own mud-caked skin. "No. I broke his nose when he tried to stop me from walking back out."

For a moment Addison was visibly stunned speechless. He turned to face David, clearly hoping David was going to choose this moment to explain exactly why Cal had gotten it all wrong. It didn't happen. In fact, David had a strange, defiant smile on his face that Addison knew better than to trust.

"Please tell me you are _not_ sleeping with my kid sister," Addy said to David.

David said nothing. Gracie stood between them. She opened her mouth to tell Addison and Cal that her sex life was absolutely none of their business. David silenced her with a glance and a shake of his head.

"Why is it so hard for y'all to believe that Gracie and I are happy together?" David glared at Addison as he stepped forward and wrapped one arm around Gracie's shoulders, pulling her against him.

Addison and Cal both stared at him in mute disbelief.

Gracie was about to jab her elbow into his side and ask him what the hell he was saying, but he pinched her sharply on the back of her neck. A definite warning to shut her mouth and just go along with it.

"Y'all really think I can't get a girlfriend?" David asked as he turned the tables on them. "I don't see why y'all are so fucking shocked? I'm starting to wonder if the two of you think I'm Sasquatch or something."

He grinned at them. It wasn't a pleasant expression. Gracie was stunned but the argument continued without her input.

"As far as I know, you haven't been on a date in five years," Addison ran his hands through his sweaty blonde hair. "By choice. God knows, Makinsley Madison has tried to get you in bed and I sure as shit wish you'd go with her. Maybe you could get her off my back."

David shrugged and gave them a toothy smile. "I know what I'm looking for in a woman. Makinsley ain't the type of girl I'm planning on bringing home to Momma. Besides, you know I don't do casual sex.

Addison choked on his own saliva. "I don't even want to think about the two of y'all having sex. In fact, I fucking forbid y'all from having sex."

"You forbid?" David shifted slightly, ready for a fight. Gracie could feel his muscles tensing beside her as he silently dared Addison to do something about it.

"Okay, I've heard enough from y'all. Especially you." Gracie poked her older brother squarely in the center of his chest. "You don't get to talk about me like I'm not standing here. And your sudden Puritan nature is more than mildly offensive, considering what a man-whore you are."

"Gracie, you have to consider your choices," Addison stuttered helplessly.

"My choices? You've been sleeping with Makinsley for years. Eww. You don't have the right to tell me to consider my choices. You make awful choices." She crossed her arms and leaned into David. She was doing her best to ignore the hurt, angry expression in Cal's eyes and focus on fighting with Addison.

"How long has this been going on?" Addison snapped at David.

David hesitated, and Gracie knew instinctively that he hadn't put that much thought into fine tuning the details of the deception he was weaving. She doubted he remembered precisely how long ago it had been when she and Cal had split up. She knew how long she'd been single right down to the day, but David wouldn't.

"Six months," Gracie lied. She couldn't bear to see the look in Cal's eyes, so she pressed her cheek against David's shoulder and glared at Addison.

"Six months?" Addison repeated with disbelief.

"We've been real careful about making sure no one found out. We didn't figure either one of you would take it too well." David didn't sound remotely apologetic. "If Cal hadn't walked in on us last night, y'all still wouldn't know."

Addison opened his mouth and closed it again.

"Why didn't y'all tell us?" Cal asked softly. There was no mistaking the hurt in his voice as he leaned tiredly against the hood of his truck.

It hurt Gracie horribly to lie to him, but she held her chin up and tried to appear believable. "I didn't think people would approve. I mean, I know my Dad would shit a brick. I just didn't want to deal with it. David was okay with keeping everything a secret, so we did."

"Shit a brick doesn't begin to cover it." Addison glared at David and then turned his attention to Gracie. "How did you get down here? I looked all over town for your damn car and didn't find it."

"It's still at school," Gracie said.

"Along with your clothes?" Addison gestured at Gracie's less than fashionable ensemble.

"I wasn't planning on coming down here this weekend," she said.

"Yeah, I just decided to show up and surprise her," David smirked. "I drove up to State right after you left last night, and then we drove right back down. We'd just gotten back when Cal showed up."

Addison stayed silent for several minutes, then turned to Cal. "You believe this shit?"

"I wouldn't have if you'd suggested it yesterday. When I got here last night they were looking hot and heavy. She was damned near naked in the living room, so yeah, I guess they're telling the truth." The anger in his voice was unmistakable. He wouldn't look at Gracie or David in the eyes as he squared his shoulders, set his jaw in a tight line and hosed the mud off his clothes.

Addison clucked his tongue and seemed about to say something else when the police issue radio in his truck crackled and Katie Cluster's voice echoed through the radio. She was saying something about an alligator loose on Main Street that he needed to go deal with.

"Jesus Christ," Addison muttered. He fixed his turquoise eyes on David. "I've got to go but we aren't done here. You hurt her, I'll kill you, chop you up into a million little pieces and feed you to the gators."

For some reason, that comment made David smile as Addy got in his truck and headed back towards town with his light bar flashing.

### Chapter 35

"Why did you tell them we were a couple?" Gracie turned on David the minute Cal left. Cal had firm instructions to tell anyone who asked that they had worked on his Chevy all morning. Cal didn't argue, but he had left claiming he needed to go try to make amends with Jo Beth. Gracie wondered if he'd spill his guts to her the minute she started in on him.

Gracie would have given anything to climb into the cab of the Chevy beside Cal and leave with him. She would have given almost anything to strangle Jo Beth. If she'd had to kill somebody, why couldn't it have been preppy, perfect Jo Beth who'd dropped dead and done the whole world a favor? Gracie hated Jo Beth with a passion that had absolutely everything to do with how much she still loved Cal Walker.

David raised one eyebrow at her as he opened a canned beer from the fridge. "Why do you think I told them that?"

"I don't know." Gracie threw up her hands. "Did you see the look on Cal's face?"

"You can make it up to him later," David replied. "You still haven't answered my question.

"What question?" Gracie snapped, she felt tired and irritable. The stress of the last 24 hours was finally making her unravel.

"Why do you think I told them that?"

"I don't know." She flung herself down on the couch and glared at his heavily tattooed back. Addison had been using David as a practice canvas for his tattoo gun for so long that David was running out of skin. His chest was taken up with the alligator and the flag. His back showed a Harley Davidson being ridden out of the gates of hell, which looked suspiciously like the gates to Possum Creek's oldest cemetery. Both his arms had almost full tattoo sleeves taking up nearly every available inch of skin with images Gracie could only describe as Southern kitsch. Rebel flags. Pistols. Bullets. A 19-point buck. The Toyota Emblem on his right arm countered a noose hanging from an old oak tree on his left. "But they believed you."

"They were supposed to. It keeps everyone safe." David made himself another ice pack and held it against the bridge of his busted nose.

"What do you mean?"

"It's believable. It may not be true, but it explains what you're doing down here, how you got here and why we're being so secretive about it." David started to pace again. Gracie wondered how long it was going to take him to pace a hole in the already sagging trailer floor.

"You mean so that if people start to ask questions?" She trailed off and David nodded

"You already told me you have no idea how many people knew you were on a date with that guy. We don't know if the cops will find out you were with him or not. We need to be prepared in case they do."

He took a deep breath and began explaining. "Killing someone isn't the hard part. Getting away with it is. We need to make sure that if and when, and we should probably just assume it's gonna be 'when,' the cops come to ask you questions, you've got real nice, airtight answers that can be confirmed with a few simple phone calls to some nice, upstanding citizens."

Gracie nodded and waited for the rest.

"I've been trying to think up a convincing alibi all day. The one that caused Cal's little hissy fit is probably the most believable."

"You mean that you and I are together?"

"It makes sense. I'm close friends with your brother. No respectable older brother likes for his buddies to be screwing around with his kid sister. Your Dad hates me, giving us yet another reason we would have kept our relationship a secret. Add in that my best friend, Cal, is deeply in love with you, and it makes sense we would have hidden things as long as possible.

At the same time, it gives you a viable reason for being down here. Girls sneak off to be with their boyfriends all the time, especially ones their families don't approve of. I mean, isn't that the whole plot behind Romeo and Juliet?" David held out his hands in a deceptively innocent shrug.

She laughed faintly. Her anger was fading as the pieces of his plan clicked into place in her mind. She didn't like what he had done, but she had to admit that his story did make a certain kind of sense. "I think you missed a few details, but basically, yeah."

"I drove up to State University, picked you up on Friday night and brought you back down here so we could have a nice little weekend by ourselves. Which my buddies happened to crash in on and ruin...therefore providing you with a nice little alibi."

"You're spooky sometimes," she told him.

"Fourth generation career criminal," he said with a smirk. "There are some benefits to coming from total sleaze."

"You're not that bad," Gracie said.

"No, but Dad was. He taught me everything he knew by the time I was twelve."

Gracie frowned but didn't argue. Instead she mulled over the story again. "Basically, we're going to say you came up and got me Friday night as a surprise?"

"It's probably better to say you called me, but either way, Cal can verify it," David said flatly. "So can Addison, for that matter. He saw me around 9:30 or so. Cal saw us at around three. Plenty of time to get to State and back."

"It makes sense."

"The trick is in the details. We've got to keep our story simple and as close to the truth as possible."

"Okay." She chewed her lip thoughtfully. "How are we going to explain why I left my dorm for a date with Brett and never came back. Not even to pick up clothes for the weekend?"

David rubbed his stubbly chin thoughtfully. His five o'clock shadow seemed to be getting bristlier every time she looked at him. "That's a tough one. Where did you meet up with him?"

"He picked me up outside the dorm."

"Did he come inside?"

"No. I waited outside and he drove up and honked for me. He was thirty minutes late, so I sat out there for awhile." She cringed at the memory of herself, all dressed up and wondering if she was being stood up. "I thought he was going to stand me up. I wish he had."

David considered for a moment. "Does your dorm have security cameras?"

"I have no idea. Probably. Why?"

"If they didn't, we could just say he never showed up and hope no one actually saw you get into the car."

"Damn. That would have worked."

"We'll think of something." He plopped down beside her on the couch.

"I'm so embarrassed."

"Oh come on." David acted as if he were mildly put out. "Am I really that lousy of a boyfriend?"

"Not you." Gracie couldn't help smiling at him. She leaned in to his shoulder. "I was referring to the mess I've gotten myself into. Everything has been pretty much exactly the opposite from how I thought it would be. When Brett asked me out, I thought life was finally turning around. Instead, Brett turns out to be a total creep who wouldn't keep his hands off me. Now everything is a thousand times worse than it was before I met him." Gracie buried her face in her hands miserably and curled into David's side. Maybe if she closed her eyes tight enough and prayed hard enough the entire mess would sort itself out.

"That's good," David said thoughtfully as he draped one arm over her shoulders and pulled her closer to him.

"What?" Her head shot up and she stared at him. "You think my life going to hell is a good thing?"

"Not necessarily but it'll work for what we need it to do."

Gracie was lost and it must have shown on her face because David began explaining his twisted logic. "You hate your roommate and she hates you, right?"

"Beyond hate. Hate is an understatement."

"What happened last night was embarrassing, right?"

She nodded, not sure where he was going with this.

"You already told me that one of the main reasons you went out with frat boy was to piss your roommate off and make her jealous. It makes sense that you wouldn't want to face her after the date went all to hell." He chewed thoughtfully on the inside of his cheek. "It also gives a pretty good excuse for why you don't go running to the cops when frat boy goes missing."

"You mean I should say the reason I didn't go back to the dorm after my date with Brett was because I was too embarrassed?" Gracie was starting to catch on to David's plan.

"Would you have wanted to go back to the dorm if he hadn't died?" he asked. "I mean, if you had gotten out of the car at that taco place and walked back to the school campus, would you have wanted to admit that to your roommate?"

"No. Probably not," Gracie admitted. "I guess I can tell anyone who asks that I was too ashamed of what had happened between me and Brett to deal with Kelsey."

"You just wanted to come home, right?"

"Well, yeah." It was the truth. "I've been wanting to come home since approximately five minutes after Addison finished lugging the last of my stuff up those three flights of stairs."

"That's beside the point." David rolled his eyes. "Your story is going to be that you didn't come back to the dorm because you were too embarrassed over Brett trying to force you to have sex with him."

"How do I explain ending up in Possum Creek?" she asked. "Or should I admit I came home at all?"

"You're going to have to admit you came home because you're probably going to have to account for your whereabouts for the rest of the weekend. Just say that you called me to come get you because you'd had a bad week and wanted to come home."

"You think people will believe it?"

"They aren't going to have much of a choice. I can say that I drove to State University and picked you up then turned around and drove right back down here. Cal can confirm we were back here by 3 a.m."

"Okay, let me get this straight." Gracie struggled to keep straight the scenario he had just spelled out for her. "You're my boyfriend but we're hiding the relationship _and_ I was cheating on you with Brett?"

"Lots of good girls want to sleep with bad boys. It's a cheap thrill." He casually flexed, displaying his tattoos.

"You're my cheap thrill." Gracie eyed the ink that was covering his arms. "I'll have to keep that in mind."

"You better keep me in mind. We're in a committed relationship now."

"My Dad is going to die."

"Amen. I don't like that bastard anyways." David crossed himself. "Think we'll get lucky and your mother will keel over too?"

Gracie smacked his chest. "Don't be evil. Besides, we're not that lucky."

"Sorry. Can't help it." He smirked at her and she snuggled against him without really meaning to. Pretending to be David's girlfriend wasn't that big of a stretch, if she could just push the look on Cal's face when he'd caught them together out of her mind.

"Anyways, my alibi?" Gracie prodded at his side in order to distract herself.

"Tell them that you have a boyfriend back home, but when Brett asked you out, you decided that what I didn't know wouldn't hurt me." David shrugged his shoulders. "The guy's uncle is the governor. Most girls who found themselves bored and two hundred miles away from their boyfriend would probably have done it."

"I wouldn't have done it if I were still with Cal," Gracie mused out loud.

"You wouldn't have gone to State if you and Cal hadn't split up," David crossed his eyes at her. "The point is that your date didn't go very well and you wound up miserable and embarrassed."

"Why would I call the guy I'm cheating on to come pick me up from a date gone wrong?"

"You know I'll forgive you. I'm a very forgiving type of guy," David smirked. "Keep it as close to the truth as possible."

"Tell that to someone who doesn't know you."

"I will be," he looked quite pleased with himself. "It doesn't matter what the truth is, Gracie. It just matters how well you can sell the lie you need people to believe."

"Why do I get the feeling you aren't just talking about my alibi?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," David told her with a wink. "The key to making this work is making your alibi as close to the truth as possible."

"You don't really want to be a couple, do you?" Gracie wasn't sure she could take the lies that far. Maybe if she never had to look at Cal again.

"No, I'm don't. But we're about to go put on a damn good show." He stood up abruptly, leaving Gracie feeling strangely abandoned.

"What are you talking about?"

"We're about to go add to our list of alibis." He offered her one of his hands.

"Huh?" She placed her palm in his and he pulled her to her feet.

"I was thinking we could head over to Canterville. You need to pick up some clothes and there isn't anything to eat in this house. I figured maybe we could go to Italiano's." He was grinning at her, and he almost looked handsome standing in the middle of the living room with that cocky smile on his face.

Gracie unexpectedly found herself wondering what it would be like to be in a not-fake relationship with David. She shook her head to jar the thought from her mind. Clearly she was under too much stress if dating David Breedlove was starting to sound like a good idea.

"You want to go out on a date?"

"Might as well. I'm hungry, you can't cook and it would give some more credibility to our story that you came down here for a nice romantic weekend with me."

"I guess I've heard worse ideas. I'm game so long as we can go to Wally World first." She picked at one of the fraying holes in the jeans he'd given her to wear. "I would love some pants that actually fit. You're too skinny."

"Whatever makes you happy," he said. "Just let me go get a shower and a shave and we'll head out."

### Chapter 36

Cal watched the sun set over the bare trusses of his unfinished house and waited for Jo Beth to find her way to the property and house he'd never told her about. He watched as her headlights turned down the long, twisting driveway and began to trek up the small, soft hill he'd chosen for the home site.

She pulled up beside the freshly scrubbed Chevy and turned off her motor. When she got out of the car, he saw she was freshly showered.

He expected her to start ranting and raving as soon as she got out of the car, but she walked quietly to where he was standing. They stared at one another in silence. Her long brown hair was pulled back in a damp ponytail. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her face puffy. It was obvious she'd been crying all afternoon. Being the cause of her misery made him feel like shit. Her black t-shirt was formfitting but conservative over dark wash blue jeans. Jo was pretty, but she wasn't Gracie. He never should have wanted her to be.

Cal almost considered getting the diamond back from Addison and giving it to her. It would make her happy. It would make his dad happy. He could wear sweater vests and drive around in Honda minivans until the day he died.

His jaw tightened, and he took a deep breath. He gestured towards a low brick wall he'd been working on, trying to decide what shade and pattern of bricks he liked the best. "We need to talk."

"I already know." Her voice was thick with tears. "You're in love with Gracie."

"Gracie has nothing to do with this." Cal tried his damnedest to sound confident in his statement.

"Just be honest with me, Cal. Honesty is all I'm asking from you." Jo Beth wrapped the ends of her long, smooth ponytail around her fingers.

"Honesty is why we're here," he said.

"Where is here, exactly?" Jo asked. "Is this something y'all are helping with from work?"

"No." Cal surveyed the surrounding property, admiring the lay of the land as it gently rolled downhill to the spring-fed creek that cut through the bottom 10 acres of the property. "It's mine."

"Yours?" She stared at him with obvious surprise.

He nodded. "I've been planning it and designing it for the last two years. I drew the blueprints myself; now I'm building it by hand."

She was startled. "You've been building a house all this time and never told me?"

"I've never told anyone. I mean, Pappy gave me the land, but no one other than David knows I've had it cleared."

"Are you serious?"

He nodded.

"Why?"

"Why build the house or why keep it a secret?"

"Why keep it a secret?" she clarified, looking puzzled.

He took a deep breath. "Because I wanted to do it my way."

"Of course you do. It's your house." She was clearly confused.

"I wanted to make the decisions. All of the decisions." He took a deep breath, struggling to explain. "I wanted to do it without other folks' opinions, beliefs, handed down superstitious old wives tales about where the rooms should go, what should be where or whether the house should face east or west. I wanted to have every single detail be the way I wanted it."

"Okay," Jo nodded. "That's reasonable, I guess. If you're going to go to all the trouble of building it yourself, you might as well have it your way."

"Jo, I realized today that this is the only thing in my entire life that I've had my way." He felt slightly better as he let his private thoughts out into the open air between them.

"What do you mean?" Jo asked.

"You kind of nailed it last night. Everything about me is the result of being Joshua Walker's grandson. My entire life up until this point has been nothing more than following the instructions that other people give me. I can design and draft blueprints for a house. I love doing it. But I work stocking shelves and running a cash register in my Pappy's hardware store because that's what I'm supposed to do." Cal took a deep breath and twisted his hands around a thick caramel colored brick he'd been playing with.

"Don't get me wrong. It pays well. Twice as well as it should, according to Google. I'm grateful to know that I'll always have a job, but I don't think I want to spend the rest of my life selling couplings and stick-on tile." Cal shrugged and stared up into the dusky, evening sky at the pale moon. "You know, no one ever asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, or if I wanted to go to college. It was just a given that I'd stay here and work in the store, just like Dad did."

"Okay," Jo nodded slightly and pursed her lips. He knew she'd been expecting him to talk about Gracie and he supposed he'd have to get around to that eventually, but first she had to know where he stood. "You're really not happy with the job?"

"I'm not really happy with my life. I hate the job. I'm bored out of my mind with it." It was the first time he'd actually said it out loud. It felt like blasphemy, but it felt right.

Jo whistled softly. "You think you're gonna quit?"

"Maybe. I've got to figure out what else I want to do, first. I'm thinking about going back to school," he said.

"I think it's a good idea," Jo surprised him. "I've been thinking about doing it too, actually. College didn't make sense when I graduated. Matt had just been diagnosed with cancer and Mom needed me to help her take care of him, Junior and the house. Now that he's more-or-less in remission he and Mom said they'd help me if I wanted to get my degree."

"Do it," Cal said. "You're good at anything you put your mind to. I know that much from experience."

"Thanks," she said softly. Jo Beth was beautiful when she smiled.

They sat in the darkness and watched one another. Cal found himself comparing her serene beauty to Gracie's. Jo was pretty enough, but she'd never hold a candle to Gracie in his eyes. It had been incredibly stupid and cruel of Cal to expect her to try.

Gracie. The memory of Gracie standing in David's front yard in broad daylight with her arms wrapped around his skinny waist was permanently burned into Cal's brain. He rubbed his forehead and sighed. "About Gracie, earlier."

Jo held up one hand. "I need to apologize about that. It just freaked me out, seeing her driving your truck. I know you've always had feelings for her and probably always will. I flipped out."

Cal smiled. "Apology accepted, though I'm sure Addy would appreciate one too."

She blushed in the darkness. "He told you I yelled at him?"

"He hunted us down right after you talked to him. He really didn't know what was going on Jo. He had no idea Gracie was in town until you told him. He was every bit as mad as you were. I got my ass reamed by him."

"Oh." Jo gave him an apologetic look and then stared down at her hands. "I'm sorry."

"I don't think he was any more ready to hear that Gracie and David have been sleeping together than I was to see it," Cal said.

"He...what?" Jo's eyes nearly bugged out of her head. "Gracie and _David_?"

Cal nodded.

"David Breedlove?"

He nodded again. "Yeah, apparently they've been sleeping together since a couple months after she and I broke up. That's the story they told me and Addy anyway."

"You've got to be kidding me." Jo shook her head skeptically.

"I wish I were," he said. "I don't get it. He's my best friend and all, but Christ, what's the appeal in David?"

He'd asked rhetorically, but Jo answered the question.

"He's got the whole bad-boy biker thing going on. Gracie is the type of girl who likes excitement," Jo said.

Cal frowned, but gestured for her to continue.

"Gracie takes risks and gets off on the adrenaline. My guess would be that his animal magnetism appeals to her. He's still calm enough he'll protect her and keep her safe, but he's wild enough for her to get a thrill off it," Jo explained. "Plus he makes for good eye- candy without his shirt on."

"David?" Cal was a bit disgusted by her using the words David and eye-candy in the same sentence. "I would have thought the alligator and skulls he has tattooed on his chest would have canceled that out."

"For me? You're right. But tattoos aren't a turn off for everyone," Jo shrugged simply.

Cal scowled. "I still don't understand it."

"Me neither, really." She stopped for a moment. "But the girls at work have talked about it at length and we've decided that-. It hurts you, doesn't it?"

"I broke his nose when I caught them together." Cal was slightly ashamed of himself now that his adrenaline had worn off.

Jo's jaw dropped. "You did what?"

"I walked in to his house and caught them just about naked," he revealed. "I flipped out. David tried to talk to me and I punched him. His nose is the size of a baseball and he's got a couple of black eyes. I'm not proud of it either."

"Ouch." She put her hand on his arm. "You really love her, don't you?"

Cal sat silently for a moment before he spoke, sounding resigned. "It doesn't matter. She doesn't feel the same way."

Jo rested her chin on his shoulder for a moment. "She cares about you."

Cal raised an eyebrow. "Not anymore."

"She still loves you, Cal. That's why she's always makes me so nervous." Jo stared into the night sky. "You love her and she loves you. I don't know why she won't tell you that, but it's obvious from the way she gravitates towards you whenever you're around. She's got to be near you, got to ride in the center of your truck. I know that if she ever tells you she loves you again, you'd leave me in a heart-beat."

"Jo," Cal took a deep breath. "That's not-."

"Don't tell me it's not true. Even if you didn't leave, you would want to leave and resent me because you'd felt you had to stay. You're too nice of a guy to abandon your obligations and break your promises."

"Jo, I'm sorry." He hadn't known she'd felt this way. It made him feel extremely guilty. Especially for all the times he'd been with her and wished she was Gracie instead of Jo Beth.

He hoped she didn't truly know how many of those moments there had been.

She shook her head at him. "You're a good guy, Cal. I think you started dating me so you could get over Gracie, but I'd bet money that she's still the first thing on your mind in the morning and the last thing on your mind right before you go to sleep at night."

Cal didn't argue. He'd had no idea he was that transparent. "If you thought that, why did you stay?"

She almost laughed. "Because the other twenty-three and a half hours a day when you weren't thinking about her, you really were a good boyfriend. Though I don't honestly think it's meant to be," She sighed and took a deep breath and Cal felt a wash of relief go through him, lifting off a burden he hadn't known he was carrying.

"I think you should go after her," she told him.

"Go after Gracie?" he stared at her. "She's with David."

"Do you really believe that?" Jo asked. "It seems really bizarre. Especially since both of them are so hotheaded. I have serious doubts about whether or not those two could put up with one another for one month, let alone six months."

He frowned, then shook his head and shrugged.

"It doesn't make any sense." Jo was tapping her foot on one of the bricks and looking thoughtful. "Didn't she go to her senior prom with some random kid?"

"She didn't go with me," Cal said, not mentioning that he'd hated missing it.

"She didn't go with David either. That would have been the talk of the town. I bet he would have worn mechanics coveralls instead of a tuxedo."

"She definitely didn't go to prom with David," Cal said. "I feel like I should be looking back and seeing some obvious clues that the two of them were involved with one another, but I'm not remembering anything remotely sexual between them. It's not like she was spending more time around the shop after we split up or anything like that. I would have noticed if she'd buddied up with David. I was the one who was hanging out in his shop nearly 24/7 after Gracie and I split up."

"From what I remember, Gracie seemed to spend most of the last few months before she went away to college holed up with her Granny Pearl. She kept to herself a lot after y'all split up."

Cal frowned. What Jo was saying matched what he remembered. For no reason, Cal suddenly found himself thinking about shiny silver BMW that he and David had cut up into bite size pieces and then buried under several tons of thick, black muddy soil. The first car he'd ever seen David pass up making a profit on.

He quickly pushed all thoughts of the BMW out of his mind. He didn't want to know where that car had come from or why David was so eager to get rid of it that he didn't care about making money. He didn't care.

"I have to have missed something," Cal said with depressed shrug. "Or maybe I'm just that big of an idiot."

"You're not an idiot." Jo Beth patted his arm kindly.

"Why do I keep screwing things up?" Cal asked. She didn't have an answer to that. Instead she took her time studying the layout of the half-built house that surrounded them.

"I guess this is it for us, huh?" She asked after a long hesitation.

"I don't know what I want," Cal told her.

"Liar," she said. "You want Gracie."

"Gracie won't have me." He wasn't able to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "She'd rather have David."

"Have you considered that maybe that's what she wants you to think?"

"You think she's dating David to piss me off?"

"It's possible," Jo said with a sad smile. "Maybe she thinks that if she makes you mad enough, you'll reconsider whatever it was that made y'all split up in the first place."

"What if I'm not sure what the hell it was I did to piss her off in the first place?" Cal asked. Truth of the matter was, he didn't remember what exactly had started the fight that had wrecked the only relationship that had ever really mattered to him. He just remembered standing in the moonlight next to a bonfire with battle lines drawn in the grass and neither one of them had been willing to budge on their point of view. Cal wished he could go back in time and smack himself senseless. He'd made a choice between his stubborn pride and the woman he loved. It had been the wrong choice.

"They say that whatever doesn't kill you will make you stronger." Jo leaned her head on his shoulder, and he wrapped one arm around her waist. As they sat in a sad but companionable silence watching the sun fade to black and the stars light up in the night sky, he realized he was going to miss her.

### Chapter 37

David handed Gracie a wad of cash as they pulled up to the Walmart Supercenter in Canterville.

"I'll wait in here," he said as he slid the battered little Toyota into a parking spot in the third row. She thumbed through the bills, four hundred dollars total. Her eyes widened.

David made a shooing gesture with his hand. "Go play. Have fun. Buy enough to last you through the weekend, but try not to take forever."

"You're not coming with me?" Gracie asked.

"You know I can't stand crowds. Walmart on a Saturday night?" David shook his head and shuddered. "I barely like going to the diner."

"You're starting to become a recluse, David. You need to get out more."

"Well, now that we're a couple I guess you can work on that." He grinned at her. The sarcasm was practically dripping from his voice and Gracie laughed. It was the first time she'd laughed all day and she was grateful for his attempts to make her smile.

"You're a damned good friend," she told him.

"Shame I make for such a lousy boyfriend." He reached for the dial on the radio, changing it from a modern country station to one that was playing Johnny Cash's Ring Of Fire. "Hurry up. Get what you need and come back outside. I hate being in town."

"Consider me gone." Gracie snorted back a small laugh as she pocketed the cash he had given her and headed towards the store. She caught sight of Addison the moment she walked past the obligatory elderly greeter.

Her older brother was leaning against the Subway counter chatting up the sandwich artist. Gracie wrinkled her nose. Addison didn't look much better than he had earlier in the afternoon. His uniform shirt was wrinkled beyond hope and his pants looked as if he'd been sleeping in them for the last week.

Directly to Addison's left was a man who had to be the infamous Kerry. He was short. His head barely came up to Addison's shoulder. His crisply ironed uniform was at least two sizes too big. No amount of tucking in was going to make the shirt fit. The edges of the sleeves fell off both of Kerry's shoulders. The extra lumps from the bilious fabric added to the slight gut he was carrying. Kerry wasn't so much fat as he was soft. He looked like he'd never dug a ditch or skinned a deer in his life.

Gracie wasn't in the mood for another fight with Addison, so she decided to try and slip past him without catching his attention. She ducked her head as she walked rapidly past the fast food restaurant. She was hoping she could make it past the first aisle of the pharmacy before Addison noticed her. It didn't work.

"Gracie!" Addison called her name before she'd made it two steps past Subway. When she turned around, he made a snapping 'come here' gesture with his fingers.

Gracie took a deep breath and walked over to her big brother with a fake, toothy smile on her face. Addison matched the smile, turned up the voltage and hugged Gracie so tightly that her back popped four or five times before he released her. She pressed her forehead against his chest and he rested his chin against the top of her head.

"Thanks," Gracie muttered. "My back feels better now."

"You're welcome." Addison wrapped his arms around Gracie's waist. "What are you doing here?"

"I just needed to pick up a couple of things." Gracie tried her best to look as innocent as possible. If Addison hadn't noticed that she was wearing David's clothes then she wasn't about to bring it to his attention. She knew he was still mad at her, but she wasn't sure how mad. "Forgot my toothbrush, you know."

"I wasn't referring to Walmart," Addison clarified.

"Oh." Gracie lifted her head and frowned up at her big brother. She desperately wanted to tell him the truth, even though David had told her not to. It wasn't that she didn't understand David's logic. It was just that she'd never hidden anything from Addison in her entire life. "Um, well."

"Ahem." Kerry appeared like magic, standing a couple of inches away from Addison's left elbow. His lips were puckered in a tight frown and his brow was furrowed. The man practically radiated disapproval. "I don't think it's appropriate to be cuddling your girlfriend in public while you're in uniform."

"Excuse me?" Addison narrowed his eyes and started to release Gracie, his fist clenched tightly at his side. Gracie tightened her grip on his neck.

"Sister," Gracie said. She shot a pointed glare at Kerry. "I'm his sister."

"Really?" Kerry looked the two of them up and down doubtfully. "You don't look like his sister."

"Are you kidding me?" Addison pulled out of Gracie's grip, reducing her hold on him to a single hand clutching his elbow. "We're damned near fucking identical. Most people who don't know us personally think we're twins."

Gracie forced herself to smile at Kerry. "He's right, you know. We have the same eyes, same nose, same lips, same face shape, same skin tone, same build, pretty much same everything except the whole gender thing. We look a lot like our mother."

"It's still not appropriate to be hugging in public," Kerry said smugly.

Addison started to raise his fist. Gracie dug her fingernails into his arm. "Not here, Bubby. Bad idea."

"See, even she agrees with me," Kerry apparently didn't realize that Addison was approximately two seconds away from ruining Kerry's truly exquisite dental work.

"Not here," Addison repeated and then nodded. He turned his focus back to Gracie. "Where's your lover boy?"

"Truck." She barely flinched when she said it.

"He might as well have come inside with you. It's not you two have to worry about hiding your relationship. _Anymore_." Addison scowled at her. Boy, was he in a lousy mood. She wondered how different his behavior would be right now if he had been the one to answer the phone last night instead of David.

"I don't really have anything to say to you about my relationship." Gracie swallowed the lump in her throat and forced herself to remain calm. David's reasons for not confiding in Addison were sound. One glance at Kerry, standing beside Addy and clearly hanging on to every word that passed between them, confirmed that David was undoubtedly making the right choice. Gracie would never forgive herself if she cost Addison his job. Or his freedom.

Or his sanity, which seemed to be one of David's concerns.

"You could have just told me the truth." Addison unclenched his fists and put his hands back on her waist. "You know I love you no matter how badly you fuck your life up."

"I love you, too." Gracie smiled shakily at him.

"Speaking of love, have you called Mom yet and told her that you were in town?" Addison asked.

"No. And don't you dare tell her either."

"Or what?" Addy asked.

"I'll...I'll...I'll be thinking of something," she threatened weakly. She just wasn't used to having secrets from him. Or being on his bad side.

Kerry laughed under his breath. Gracie wanted to slap the smirk off of his pompous little face. Kerry was both shorter and thinner than she was. Knocking him senseless wouldn't be hard to do. As long as she didn't somehow manage to kill the idiot. Gracie shuddered involuntarily and Addison frowned at her.

"Well, if you don't want me telling Mom that you aren't safe and sound in your dorm room, then you might want to turn your phone back on. If I were you, I'd do it before she tries to call the dorm and finds out you're M.I.A. She told me earlier she'd been trying to get a hold of you all day and your cell is off."

"Oh, shit." Gracie reached for her pocket and then realized the phone was still in her purse at David's. "My battery must have died. I don't have my charger with me. I guess I'll pick one up while I'm here and call her when I get back to the house tonight."

"You better, because I'll tell her where she can find your scrawny little hoochie ass if you don't," Addison threatened. "Don't think she wouldn't drive over there in a heartbeat if she had any clue about y'all doing- whatever it is that you're doing." He made a forking gesture with two of his fingers. "By the way, you _are_ on birth control right?"

"Addy, shut up." She glared at him. "As much fun as it's been talking to you, I'm sure y'all have things to do. I know I do. Get up with me later, Addison. We'll finish this conversation somewhere where I can kick you in the balls without getting charged with assaulting a police officer."

Addy laughed. Kerry took a step backwards and tripped over the leg of the chair beside him, knocking it over and onto the floor with a loud crash. Addison looked over at him with an expression of total disgust.

Gracie wiggled her fingers at her big brother in a half-wave. She had already turned away from him when he said her name again.

"Gracie."

"What?" She paused without turning around.

"You got enough money to get what you need?"

"Yeah, plenty," she replied. She thought of the four hundred dollar bills that the normally tight-wadded David had handed to her.

"Good, I didn't want to have to give you any," he said. "But I just got paid yesterday. If you're going to need cash, you need to tell me now. My paychecks don't last to Monday. You know how I am."

Gracie turned back around, closed the distance between herself and her brother and threw her arms back around his neck in a tight hug. Addison hugged her close to him.

"If you need me, you call me. Day or night. No matter what. Okay?" He whispered the words in her ear, too low for Kerry to hear him speaking. Gracie nodded.

"I will," she lied as she pulled away from him a second time.

### Chapter 38

"She didn't drive herself here." Addison appeared to have completely forgotten about his chicken salad sandwich with extra provolone cheese during his conversation with the girl he claimed was his sister.

Kerry hadn't been aware that Addison had a sister, though he supposed the turquoise eyes were a dead giveaway that the two were blood relatives. He'd actually assumed Addison's eyes were colored contacts until he noticed the Sheriff had the same eye color.

"I need to go out to the parking lot and find someone real quick," Addy said.

"I'll come with you." Kerry immediately tossed his own sandwich back in its bag, earning himself a withering look from Addison. Kerry didn't care. It was kind of nice seeing someone else get under Addison's skin, especially after Addison had tried to chain smoke him into an asthma attack this afternoon. Kerry wasn't planning on missing any part of the show.

"Suit yourself." Addison headed out the door, leaving Kerry scrambling to keep up.

"Just out of curiosity, why are you so mad that your sister snuck home from college?" Kerry asked.

"I don't care that Gracie isn't at college." Addison paused at the front of the parking lot, obviously looking for a vehicle he recognized. "I'm just pissed off that they didn't tell me what was going on."

"They?"

"Let's just say that I was a little surprised to find out _who_ my sister ditched college to come spend time with." Addison started walking towards the far right side of the parking lot. His long legged strides were nearly impossible for Kerry to match, forcing him to jog along beside Addison like a chihuahua trying to keep pace with a mastiff.

Kerry had just about caught up when Addison stopped in his tracks. They were standing next to the bed of a rusty, heavily-dented, dark blue single cab Toyota pick-up truck with a lift kit and a set of those oversized mud tires that Kerry hated because of the roaring noise they made when the offending vehicle was traveling down the road.

Addison thumped one hand down on the edge of the tailgate, hitting it hard enough to make the entire truck shake. The driver's side door opened and David Breedlove stepped out.

Kerry's heart sunk in his chest and an involuntarily shiver shot down his spine. It took everything he had not to spin around and bolt back into the safety of the store.

What's up, Addy?" David hadn't changed much since high school, if Kerry didn't count the tattoos. David had only had a handful of tattoos when they had been in high school. Now the ink covered both his arms. Otherwise, the bad-tempered high school bully was still unhealthily thin with the same dark green, hooded eyes that had always made Kerry's break out in a cold sweat. Kerry felt his right eye quiver involuntarily. He gulped and steeled himself. He would not twitch. Would not. He was not that kid anymore. He was an adult. And a cop. David could not intimidate him anymore.

Addison's turquoise eyes met David's green ones without hesitation. For several moments the two of them just stared at one another. It was Addison who finally broke the gaze.

"You're seriously screwing my kid sister?" Addison asked in a resigned tone. He was clearly annoyed but apparently had decided to give up the fight.

"Gracie's an adult," David said. His nose was swollen to double the size it should have been and he had black and blue bruising around both of his eyes. Kerry wondered if Addison had been the one to cause the damage. The thought of someone using David as a punching bag gave Kerry an unexpected rush of pleasure. Maybe Addison would be an unexpected ally for him in his quest to put David behind bars for good. Kerry struggled to appear neutral as he watched the two of them continue to square off. "Also, I'm not screwing her. I'm dating her. There's a difference."

"I don't know what kind of a joke y'all are trying to play, but it's not funny." Addison glared at David. "I swear to God if you hurt her-."

"You'll kill me. Yeah. Get in line. Cal's already claimed first right to disembowel me with a rusty butter knife if I so much as make her cry." David tentatively touched his nose. "I think that crazy SOB would do it, too."

Kerry nearly choked on his own spit. He remembered Calvin Walker just as well as he remembered David. Cal was the spitting image of his tyrant of a grandfather. He stood good three or four inches shorter than David but probably weighed twice as much. He was broad-shouldered and stocky. He'd been a linebacker for Possum Creek High School before someone with a lot more talent and a lot less name had shattered most of his right leg during a game.

The good people of Possum Creek liked to gush over Cal Walker, but Kerry remembered all too well how inseparable David and Cal had been in school. It was impossible to like the guy who'd spent too much time out of fourth period every day convincing David to just leave Kerry stuffed in his locker and come to class already. Or skip class. Whatever the particular mood was that day.

Kerry would never forget the heavily chlorinated taste of the toilet water at Possum Creek High School. The back of his throat burned right now just thinking about it. He fought he urge not to throw up on his own feet.

"He already did a number on you," Addison almost laughed, then sighed. "I didn't even think Cal still had it in him."

"Me neither. I actually thought Jo Beth had cut his balls off and was keeping them in a jar on her desk at work for all the other girls to see."

"You just better be glad it was Cal who caught y'all and not me," Addison grumbled. " _Your balls_ would be on _my desk_ at work if I'd walked in on you screwing my sister."

David yawned, clearly bored with Addison's threats. He studied Kerry for a moment. The blank expression in his cold eyes made Kerry wonder if the murderer who had haunted his nightmares for years even remembered him.

"Got a new trainee?" he asked Addison, appearing disinterested.

Addison grinned and thumped Kerry's should hard enough to make Kerry's knees buckle. "You remember Kerry Longwood, don't you?"

David seemed about to say something when Gracie slipped down the side of the truck and appeared off to David's right side. She slid her long, delicate fingers around his wrist. Addison's eyes narrowed visibly as David shifted back away from him and wrapped one of his arms around Gracie's shoulders, pulling her to him.

Kerry noticed that she had changed into a strawberry red halter top with little leaves trimming the bottom hem and a pair of tight jeans that left very little to the imagination. Her long blonde hair had been freed from the ponytail holder and brushed out so that it fanned around her shoulders. She had put on shimmery eye shadow and lip gloss and she was carrying several plastic Walmart bags on each arm. Her eyes narrowed into a glare when she turned towards Addison.

"Don't tell me, you're here to make more 'don't hurt my little sister or else' threats?"

"Nah, screw it. I've decided I don't give a shit what he does with you," Addison snapped.

David chuckled under his breath but quickly looked away when Addison shot a nasty look in his direction. David pressed his chin against the top of Gracie's shoulder and grinned smugly at Addison.

"I reckon I'll see you around, man. I promised her I'd take her to Italiano's. If it gets too much later, I'm afraid we'll end up having to wait for a table." He released Gracie from the embrace and gave her a peck on the cheek. She stiffened for a brief second and then turned into him so that her lips brushed lightly across his.

Addison nearly barfed on his own boots. "Get a room, y'all."

"We have a whole house," David pointed out.

"If I were you, I'd start locking the front door." Addison made a punching gesture with his right fist. "But I guess y'all had better get going. I'd hate to fuck up your date night by making you miss your dinner reservations." Addison's voice was thick with sarcasm as he rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, that'd be a real shame," David agreed with a smirk on his thin lips. The two of them stared at one another over Gracie's head for a moment before Addison backed away.

"We'd probably better be getting back on patrol already. It was just lovely running into y'all. Be careful tonight." Addison said as he caught David's arm with one hand. "And just remember, if you hurt her, I'll kill you."

"Don't worry, I'm sure she'll kill me herself if I do anything out of line," he said with a straight face as Gracie choked hard on the bottle of Coke she'd just opened.

Addison turned and walked back to his truck. He got into the driver's seat as if he planned on going somewhere but instead sat in the parking lot and wordlessly watched the Toyota until Gracie and David had gotten back into their truck and driven away. Kerry buckled his belt and waited for the next step as he watched Addison.

"David Breedlove, huh?" Kerry threw the name out there hoping Addison would take the bait, but Addy just nodded. Kerry didn't know Addison very well, but he didn't seem like the kind of guy who would take too kindly to someone mistreating his kid sister. Kerry decided to take a chance, hoping he could form an alliance against David with another law enforcement officer.

"I went to high school with David. He's a scary guy," Kerry said. "I wouldn't want him dating my sister."

"David's one of my best friends. I don't give a shit about him dating my sister." Addison turned and scowled at Kerry. "I'm just pissed off because he didn't tell me he was with her until after they'd already been caught. He should have been straight up about it."

"Oh." Kerry slumped down in the passenger's seat with his hope of having found a partner in his quest against David shattered.

### Chapter 39

Gracie decided the short wait for a table at Italiano's had definitely been worth it as she leaned back in the booth and sipped the pretty, fruity frozen daiquiri David had ordered with his ID and then pushed across the table to her.

As she watched David order a bottle of beer and drum on the side of the marinara bowl with a bread stick, it occurred to Gracie that this was all that she had wanted from her miserable date with Brett last night. Just a decent meal that wasn't cooked by the poor unfortunate souls who had landed in the dining hall as a student work job and some conversation with a decent looking guy.

"Don't look now but we're getting the evil eye." David smirked at her from across the table.

"Huh?" Gracie didn't know how he still had the energy to fidget. She was exhausted as she pushed her salad around her plate with a fork, chasing a black olive. She'd bought him a dark green polo shirt when she had been in Walmart. It matched his eyes and actually fit across his chest and shoulders. He had shaved his face and put on some kind of good smelling aftershave. He was attractive, in his own way. When he decided to be. If a girl liked tattoos.

He jerked his chin to their left. "Olivia Barker is sitting at that corner booth. She's been watching us since we walked in."

"Oh, charming." Gracie sighed in irritation. All dressed up, she suspected they made a believable enough couple so long as whoever was looking was dumb enough to believe what they saw. "I'm surprised she hasn't come over here yet, just to make sure we know that she's going to tell the entire Possum Creek Baptist Church _exactly_ what we did tonight."

"That's fine." David reached one of his hands across the table. "Remember, we're fixing to be the talk of the town anyways. Might as well make sure they have something good and juicy to talk about."

Gracie couldn't help laughing as she let him take her hand. He made a big show of stroking her fingers in the middle of the table while the waiter dropped off more bread and took their order.

"You are so bad," she said as they watched the waiter depart. She still couldn't believe she had kissed him in the middle of the Walmart parking lot. Granted, it had just been a little kiss, and it had just been for show, but she had felt his surprise when she'd brushed her lips across his.

It had been a friendly little kiss but there hadn't been any passion in it. Gracie missed passionate kisses. She missed Cal. It wasn't fair to be missing Cal right now, but it seemed like the more time she spent one-on-one with David, the more obvious it was that there was a gaping hole in her life where Cal belonged and that she, as a person, was just flat out incomplete without him.

"I know, but I'm good at being bad." David grinned at her. The swelling around his eyes was starting to fade into his tanned skin. She suspected that his nose was going to be very crooked from now on since he hadn't bothered going to the doctor to have the broken part set back the way it was supposed to go. She was also quite certain he didn't care.

"I don't know how you're still sane," Gracie admitted before she thought better of speaking what was on her mind.

"Never said I was." He shrugged his shoulders and bit into another bread stick.

"I'm starting to feel like I've lost my own mind." Gracie closed her eyes for a moment and then reopened them. "I feel like I've ruined everything. I went away to college because I thought it would help me figure out where I wanted to go with my life. Instead it just made me think I made a horrible mistake when I walked away from what I had."

He raised an eyebrow and waited for her to continue.

"College is absolutely nothing like I thought it would be," she told him. "It's hard to explain. I thought it would be different from Possum Creek, and it is, but not in the way I thought it would be."

"What do you mean?" He raised one eyebrow at her.

Olivia chose that moment to come waddling past their table. David had apparently noticed her approaching because he chose that moment to lean across the table and give Gracie a brief kiss on the forehead.

Gracie thought she heard Olivia gasp as she passed by. David smirked and Gracie giggled. For a brief moment, as she watched him stick his tongue out at Olivia's retreating backside, she felt like everything would work out. One way, or another.

"I guess I'm just too old-fashioned," she gestured at the restaurant surrounding them. "When Brett asked me out to dinner, I thought he genuinely wanted to take me out to eat so we could get to know one another better. When I was getting ready to go, I put on what I thought was a really cute outfit and Kelsey, my roommate, made fun of me and said I looked like an unsophisticated redneck." She shrugged her shoulders. "She went over to my closest and picked out that stupid mini-skirt and that slutty shirt I bought last spring but never had the guts to wear. Next thing I know I'm sitting in the drive-thru lane of this stupid Mexican place with a guy who doesn't think he should have to buy me dinner and then calls me a whore when I tell him to quit trying to feel me up."

David didn't say anything so Gracie kept talking.

"The entire time it was happening, I was sitting there going 'this can't be real. This kind of stuff doesn't happen to me.' I wish I could just come home," Gracie said softly. "I hate it at State. I never realized how good I had it here until I ruined everything. I never realized how much I needed Cal until I lost him."

"You know what the main difference between me and Cal is?" David asked. She suddenly wondered if he had the ability to read her mind, or if he was just thinking along the same lines as she did.

"I could name a few," Gracie offered, unsure where he was going with this line of conversation.

"Cal cares about what everyone thinks of him," David told her. "He's always worried whether or not everyone else is happy."

"Whereas you just don't care."

"Precisely. People expect the worst possible behavior from me anyway," he smirked. "No one is surprised when I get into a fight or break the rules. There are only a handful of people in this county who expect me _not_ to act like a total asshole all the time."

"Me, Addison and Cal?"

"You got it. Well, y'all and Miss Loretta." David smiled slightly when he mentioned Cal's mother.

"Cal is furious with us. You realize that, don't you?"

"Oh, I know he's mad. He'd have rather shot me this morning than looked at me."

"He still came over to help though," Gracie closed her eyes and tried not to think about the look on Cal's face when he'd left David's house. "He's such a good guy."

"No, he's not," David frowned at her. "He's pretending to be a good guy all the while getting more and more pissed off at life. Cal doesn't know how to make his own choices, so he does whatever he thinks everyone else wants him to do and then won't admit he's miserable when things don't work out the way that he thinks they should have. He worries so much about pleasing Joshua Walker and living up to everyone's expectations that he forgets to pay attention to what he wants for himself."

"What do you mean?"

"Cal and I were talking today while we were out at the lease. Do you remember back in kindergarten, when the teacher would ask you what you wanted to be when you grew up, and everyone in the class had good answers?"

Gracie nodded as she let the waiter take her salad plate and replace it with a bowl of seafood alfredo. She had no idea where David was going with this. He leaned closer to her as Olivia Barker came waddling back past their table, shooting them a nasty glare down her snubbed-up nose. The large woman was intentionally walking as close to them as she could. Gracie knew from past experience that any words Olivia overheard would be misconstrued and shared publicly with whatever poor soul she cornered and forced to hear her out.

Gracie figured she was going to have to come up with something to tell he mother before her Jane May made it to church and heard about how her daughter was making out with David in the middle of a public restaurant. David waited to resume speaking until Olivia was back out of eavesdropping range.

"It always amazed me that every single kid in that class knew what they wanted from life by age five. They just knew they could grow up to be an astronaut, a doctor, fireman, police man, pilot, pirate ship captain or whatever. Everyone had potential, and it seemed, back then, that everyone would make those goals. Everyone would grow up to have a good future, a good job, family, nice house. No one ever said they were going to grow up to be an anorexic, clinically depressed junkie with five kids on welfare. No one ever said they were going to grow up to spend their adult lives rotting in a jail cell." David prodded at his lasagna with a fork. "When the teacher used to ask Cal what he wanted in life he'd tell them the same thing every time. He'd say that his Pappy said he was going to grow up and run Walker Hardware just like his Pappy and his Daddy had."

"That doesn't surprise me a bit," Gracie admitted with a sigh. "I don't think Cal has ever taken the time to make a decision without someone else telling him what he wanted. Everyone expects certain things from Cal, and then he expects me to just fall into place with the rest of his pre-planned life."

"There are worse things that could happen to you than getting trapped in Cal's perfect little world." He took a deep breath. "Do you remember my half-sister, Heather?"

"Vaguely." Gracie plucked a shrimp out of her pasta and nibbled on the end of it. "She was a little bit older than you, wasn't she?"

"By one year, six months and three days. My mother ran off and hers was an alcoholic. None of that mattered when we were kids. We used to sneak out the windows of Dad's trailer to go swim in the creek even though we weren't supposed to because there were gators in it. We'd pretend we were adults, you know. I was gonna win the Indianapolis 500 and Talladega and she said she was gonna be a veterinarian. We'd go back into the swamp and climb trees, build forts by the water and act like we had these great jobs and were all grown up with all this money and talked about our world travels," he laughed, but it was a sad laugh. "Now she's 25 and washed up. She has two kids and doesn't know who the younger one's daddy is. It seems like such a waste." He studied his food with significantly more intensity than it deserved. "Everyone makes choices. Some of those choices are good. Sometimes they suck. The thing is, you have to remember that not all the options in the future are going to be perfect. You have to be willing to admit you made a mistake before you build on it."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, chewing up the food and mechanically swallowing.

It was Gracie who finally broke the silence. "I'm not asking for a perfect life. I'm just asking for a little bit of room to make my own choices. I've never known what I wanted. When everyone else had all those plans, I was standing back in the shadows wondering how everyone else could be so sure of themselves when I was so lost." She pushed more of her food around on her plate. "You know that's why Cal and I broke up, don't you?"

David raised his eyebrows in surprise. "I don't know anything about why you and Cal broke up. Neither of you wanted to talk about it. I don't waste my breath asking nosy, pointless questions no one wants to answer."

Gracie didn't want to talk about it. She hadn't talked about the fight she'd had with Cal to anyone. Not her Granny Pearl or Addison or anyone. Now David was watching her with a strange expression on his face, and she realized she had absolutely nothing to hide from him anymore. He couldn't possibly think any worse of her. "I guess I owe you some kind of explanation, don't I?"

"You don't owe me anything, Gracie. I'm not that kind of guy." He was telling the truth. And because he never asked anything of her, she decided to tell him the truth.

"I've never been completely sure about what I wanted. He knew that but he kept pressing me on what I was going to do after graduation. The night we broke up, we'd been drinking at the fish camp pretty much all day and Cal was completely lit by the time we got to that party. All of a sudden he decides it's a good idea to get down on one knee in the bed of his truck and propose. He's sitting there telling me about how we can get married in the summer and how he'll build us a perfect house and stay in Possum Creek forever. All I could think the entire time he was talking was that I loved him, but if I did what he wanted me to, my life would be over at age 18."

"Over?"

"No more surprises. No more risks or chances. Just me and Cal and Possum Creek forever. He'd keep working at Walker Hardware full time, and it wouldn't matter what I did after high school because I'd never work. I'd stay at home and have babies and we'd have a pretty house and a white picket fence and someday we'd celebrate out 50th wedding anniversary with our grandkids. It was all laid out right there in front of me, and it terrified me. I want Cal, but I don't want that cut and dried life. I still want to be able to dream and plan and hope. It's so hard to explain. I love Cal's parents but I don't want to _be_ them."

"Believe it or not, Cal doesn't want to be them either. He's just too stubborn to admit it."

"He's never going to admit it. He wouldn't listen to me when I tried to explain how I felt to him the way I just explained it to you." Gracie found herself fighting back tears for what felt like the thousandth time in the last 24 hours. "He just shut down on me. He said that either I wanted him or I didn't."

"So you told him you didn't?" His tone was matter of fact.

"More or less. How did you know that?"

"I lied when I said Cal had never told me anything about the break up. He said one thing. He said you said you didn't want him."

"He shouldn't have made it an ultimatum." She felt the familiar anger bubbling in her chest. "Even now, when I'd do anything to have him back, it still pisses me off that he won't give. He'll never give. Arguing with Cal is like playing tug of war with a brick wall."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that," David said after several minutes of silence. He gestured at his broken nose and swollen eyes. "Cal can break the mold when he wants to."

"I don't know if he wants to," she pointed out.

"I think he'll come around," David reached across the table and took her hand. She squeezed his fingers. "Your life isn't ruined. It's just a bit derailed at the moment."

"I wish I could believe you. Every time I close my eyes or am alone for minute, all I can think about are the things I could have done differently."

"Have I ever lied to you?" he asked. She shook her head no.

"I'm doing my best to make sure everything works out," he told her as he released her hand. "Tell you what. If we get through the next couple weeks and we're in the clear, I'll deal with Cal for you."

"You'll deal with Cal for me?" Gracie repeated his words skeptically.

"I can make him see reason. I'll talk to him. Explain everything that has happened and why we let him think we were together. He'll come around."

"That might work except he doesn't listen." She didn't dare feel hopeful. Too much had already gone wrong. "He's too stubbornly set in his own ways."

"I'm sure I can figure out some way to make him hear me out," David said with a wink. "I'll duct tape his ass to an anthill and force him to hear to the truth if I have to."

She laughed faintly. "I can't believe everything you've done to protect me. I don't know how I'm ever going to repay you."

"You want to make all this worth it?" he asked. "Then promise me you won't let what happened this weekend ruin your life. Do everything you can to put it behind you. Make up with Cal and marry him, if that's really what you want. Have lots of pretty babies and a nice house and just live your life the way you want to live it."

"You really are my hero, you know that?"

"Don't say that. You'll ruin my good reputation. I make a much more effective evil villain."

"Only in Kerry's world."

David snorted back a laugh. "Speaking of me and my evil-doings, we need to get going. I still have some things I need to get taken care of in order to make sure your happily ever after has an ever after." He looked at her almost empty plate. "You about ready?"

She nodded and pushed her plate aside as he signaled the waitress for their check.

### Chapter 40

The moonshine still had been hidden in the depths of the bayou since prohibition. The water around the still was rippled with barely visible cypress knees and infested with alligators. David suspected the original owners of the still had chosen the tiny crop of land deep in the swamp because even the most dedicated lawman would have to think twice about risking life and limb for a batch of white lighting.

David had chosen the location for the same reason the moonshiners had. No cop would want to come looking for evidence in the bellies of alligators, deep in the swamp.

The murky creek water was blacker than the night surrounding David as he carefully guided his small boat down a narrow slew without the benefit of lights. The chirps and croaks of the swamp at night filled the air. On any other night, he would have reveled in his ability to blend flawlessly into the predatory darkness. Any other time, he would have been pleased with himself.

Tonight, he just wanted to dump his cargo into the depths of the alligator infested bayou and go home. He kicked aside the package of thick hooks and nylon rope that he'd loaded into the boat. He didn't need the gear, but he'd rather have it on hand just in case someone wanted to know what he was doing. If anyone caught him, he'd tell them he was poaching a few alligators out of season. It wasn't like he'd get in trouble for poaching. There were benefits to being best friends with the game warden.

The deep, croaking mating call of a bull gator sounded from somewhere close to the trees. David reached down to the floor of the boat and picked up a raw, bloody chunk of meat with his bare hand. He tossed the meat in the gator's direction. It landed in the water with a splash that David suspected only sounded loud to him. He reached down and took another handful of meat, this time choosing to toss it to the right of the boat. He wished he could use his spotlight to find the gators, but he couldn't risk being seen tonight. He was going to have to rely on his memory and his instinct to find the right hiding places tonight.

The slew he traveled through had plenty of gators in its own right, but it was the shiner's still that was David's final destination. He dropped bits and pieces of blood and bone into the water as he slowly eased his boat through the darkness. A bread crumb trail for the alligators he knew would follow after the scent of wounded prey. The raw meat would create a feeding frenzy among the hungry alligators. David hoped to be gone by the time the reptiles ran out of dead meat and began to tear living chunks off of one another.

A loud splash echoed off the bank of the creek, less than 10 feet away from where he was sitting in his boat. He hesitated for only a moment before he flung a large chunk of meaty flesh into the wake. The metal of the still glinted brightly in the moonlight as the cloud cover shifted. He caught sight of a long, dark silhouette in the water. It was heading his way.

David took a deep breath and stood up in the boat, careful to keep his weight evenly distributed so that the little boat did not tip. He used both his hands to grasp one of the large white buckets he had been transporting. With a well-aimed thrust, he launched the contents of the bucket out into the depths of the water. The approaching alligator stopped abruptly as meat rained down across the creature's back. David nearly laughed as he picked up the second bucket and prepared to let the gators devour every bite of the evidence of a crime he hadn't committed.

### Chapter 41

"You really think this is going to work?" Ian leaned against the door-frame of Addison's truck. He was staring at the Callahan County Sheriff's Department building as if the brick held all the secrets of the universe.

"Define work," Addy said as he watched Kerry Longwood walk across the employee parking lot and get into CCSD cruiser number four.

"Make him, you know, quit." Ian sounded nervous and Addy wasn't surprised. Ian didn't exactly have the balls or the smarts to back up the kind of stunts Addison liked to pull. He would have rather had David or Cal on his side tonight, but he needed another officer to back him up, making Ian his only choice.

"No, I don't. But if everything goes right tonight, we'll catch the poachers and make Kerry look like the complete and utter moron he is." Addison smiled reassuringly at Ian. "We can do no wrong."

"It feels wrong. Setting Kerry up just feels wrong." Ian was playing with his CCSD badge again. He'd managed to buff most of the rust off it in in a matter of days, primarily by fidgeting with the thing at every opportunity.

"Do you want to keep your cruiser and uniform, or not?" Addison knew that Ian cracked under pressure like bone china being run over by a jacked up four-wheel drive. He was going to have to force Ian to hold it together, or they were all screwed.

"You know I do. I need this job. It's just that what we're doing feels wrong to me. I'm doing my very best to be a good cop. If my best still isn't good enough to beat Kerry's best, maybe he really would be the better man for the job."

"You're a good cop, Ian. You're a fair, good-tempered guy, and you know how things work in Callahan County. You know what you can let slide, and what kind of shit has to be turned in no matter who's done it and how much they're willing to pay to keep it under the table." Addison sighed and played with the buttons on his radio. He had no idea how much time they would have to kill before dispatch called to announce the poachers were putting in their nightly appearance.

"But Kerry-."

Addison cut Ian off. "Kerry doesn't understand the difference between doing a job and exacting revenge for an old grudge. Kerry got bullied in school by most of people he would be charged with protecting if he was hired on as a full time permanent deputy. He wants revenge on half the town. If we let him carry around a badge, he's going to charge everyone in sight with everything he can think of." Addison took a deep breath. "David's at the top of Kerry's list, Ian. _David_."

"I know. Kerry hates him with a passion." Ian abruptly stopped playing with the badge. "Wish David didn't act like such a douchebag all the time."

"It doesn't matter what David acts like at this point. Kerry thinks he killed Casey. He wants him to hang for it. You can't let that happen. You owe it to David to make sure Kerry doesn't get this job."

"I know. Believe me. I know." Ian started to say something else but their radios crackled at the same time and drowned his words out. A report of strange colored lights in Ray Johnson's back pasture. Addison smiled.

"Time to get the party started," he told Ian as he cranked the Ford. Ian was already heading back around to his own cruiser.

"Let's make this one count, Addy. Let's make it worth it."

"I always make it count," Addison replied.

### Chapter 42

David had always liked the creek at night, but his fondness for the dark, murky water didn't make him any more eager to go swimming in it. There was a certain element of risk associated with going deep into the depths of the bayou smelling strongly of blood and raw meat. After all, it wasn't just chock full of crickets. Plenty of alligators lived in the depths of Possum Creek.

He pressed the barrel of his shotgun into the bottom of the 12-foot jon boat he had used to haul Brett Parker's body to the alligator-infested moonshine still in the heart of the bayou and pulled the trigger. He repeated the process three more times until he was satisfied with the amount of dark creek water that was rapidly flowing into the bottom of the boat.

He'd heard too much about carpet fibers, finger prints, and the itty bitty drops of DNA that could survive months of exposure to the elements and cleaning products. He'd used his boat to get rid of Brett, and now he had to get rid of his boat.

He was going to miss the boat.

David allowed himself to slide into the water as he guided the sinking boat towards a deeper section of the creek for its final resting place. He was only a few hundred yards upstream from the edge of his own property, but he trusted the distance would be long enough to keep anyone who might unearth the sunken boat a couple of years from now from automatically assuming it belonged to him.

Any evidence of Brett's death that the boat might contain should be washed away in the current long before David had to contend with awkward questions about a sunken boat with its registration stickers removed.

The night was inky and black. The stars were concealed by thick clouds that David hoped would turn into a nice, heavy rainstorm. Water was purifying and he had left quite a few incriminating items in the deep, alligator infested waters that needed to be purified. Or eaten. David had staked his bet on them being eaten.

He watched as the boat gurgled up a last burst of bubbles and sank to the bottom of the creek bed. He thought he heard the night groan of a gator in heat not too far away. Stomach churning, David hoisted the shotgun above his head and headed downstream towards his own property.

A nice bright spotlight would have greatly lowered his odds of being eaten by an alligator, but David knew he couldn't risk running his spotlight just in case someone saw the light and decided to ask questions. He sure as hell couldn't afford to have Addison show up in the fish and game boat to see what he was up to. Not when Addy had Kerry on his heels every time he took a step. David vowed he would dedicate more of his time to getting rid of Kerry just as soon as he had Gracie safe and sound back in her dorm room at State University.

Assuming he didn't get arrested or eaten by an alligator first. He moved through the water as quickly and silently as he could until he reached dry land. He'd never felt so relieved to have swampy, mucky mud under his bare feet as he did at this moment.

### Chapter 43

"Asshole!" Kerry screamed as the tail lights of Addison Malone's truck faded into the night. "You'll pay for this."

He turned back to his cruiser. The already decrepit vehicle was up to its doors in black swamp mud. Kerry had been forced to climb out the driver's side window because the doors wouldn't open. Kerry had cold, wet mud going halfway up his thighs. His one and only pair of uniform pants were ruined. For some incomprehensible reason, only having one pair of pants made the whole situation seem so much worse.

Kerry could hear the big Ford truck roaring away on the dirt road, just on the other side of the trees from him. He felt like crying. "I'm such an idiot."

"Kerry, why don't you follow me on this poaching call? I've been having a real problem catching these guys, and I think it's because they go around the back and escape whichever way I don't go. I sure could use your expertise to help me stop them." He mimicked the words Addison had said to him only an hour ago when he'd sent Ian to the back side of Ray Johnson's pasture to block the gate and sent Kerry through the gate and into the pasture to run the hypothetical poachers up through the north gate, directly into Addison's waiting handcuffs.

"Yeah, absolutely the cruiser can make it on the Johnson farm. No problem. Dry." Kerry kicked at the thick, suctioning mud with his wet sock. The mud had sucked his left boot off his foot when he had gotten out of the cruiser in an attempt to chase Addison's Ford on foot. "Dry as a bone."

"I'm way too trusting," Kerry admitted out loud to the audience of cows who were gradually ambling over to him, curious as to why this strange human was standing in the middle of their field talking to himself. "It's not like I don't know that Addison wants Sheriff Chasson to hire Ian. It's obvious the two of them are good friends. Hell, they probably spend holidays together; Addison is Sheriff Chasson's nephew and Ian is practically his step-son. They might as well be cousins." Kerry threw up his hands, making one of the cows jump and another one snort at him.

"I might as well face the music. Sheriff Chasson doesn't want me hired either. He's the one who ordered me to help them tonight. He had to know they were going to pull some kind of stupid high school bullshit. I should have known they were going to pull stupid high school bullshit. Stuff like this is exactly why I left Possum Creek to begin with."

Kerry couldn't stop the hot, angry tears from escaping. He slammed his fist down onto the hood of the cruiser in frustration. The metal made his hand sting. Kerry sunk down to his knees in the mud next to the car.

"Why won't anyone here just give me a chance?" He asked no one in particular. "I barely know Addison. He was in the Navy when I was in high school. He doesn't know me and yet, he still hates me. Everyone in this entire stinking town hates me."

Kerry laid his head against the cruiser's beefy bumper and stared miserably at the cows. He would be here until dawn, undoubtedly. He'd tried to radio for help when his cruiser had started to bog down. He'd discovered then that his radio didn't work. All the wires appeared to have been cut. He would have used his cellphone to call for help but he had exactly no signal down here. Cellphone signal had never been something you could count on in Possum Creek, regardless of who your carrier was or how expensive a plan you purchased.

He was mulling over his misfortunes when he heard the sound of a motor approaching. Kerry closed his eyes and tried to focus on the noise. The vehicle was definitely coming closer to where he was sitting. It sounded like it was coming from the rear. Kerry realized someone must have driven up through the back gate. He quickly stood up, hoping against all hope that one of his lousy coworkers had felt guilty enough to come back for him.

Kerry climbed to the roof of the cruiser and began waving his arms as headlights burst out of the trees on the far side of the pasture. He was too far away. The small truck sped northwest, away from him and towards the creek. Not thinking that he could flash his headlights, Kerry jumped off of the cruiser and began sprinting across the pasture as the truck slowed. He was still 200 yards away when the truck stopped abruptly near the edge of the tree line. Kerry could see that the truck was not a Sheriff's Department vehicle. It appeared to be an older model Toyota, similar to the one his father had owned before making millions off his mother's disastrous neurosurgery.

The driver of the truck climbed out of the cab. Kerry could just barely see him moving as he opened the tailgate. The loud, cut-off exhaust prevented the driver from hearing Kerry's yells for help. The driver pulled a large bundle out of the bed of the truck and tossed it down onto the ground. No sooner had the package hit the ground than the driver was back in his truck and speeding away into the night.

"No! No! Wait! Help! Please, wait!" Kerry, panting hard and sweating profusely, reached the spot where the truck had been just in time to watch the taillights fade away into the distance. He was almost certain the truck had been the same Toyota he'd seen David Breedlove driving at Walmart earlier tonight. They were probably in on this together. Addison's bitching about David had probably just been an act designed to make Kerry think they were arguing. Addison had probably called him to come see the stuck cruiser and get a good laugh at poor little pathetic Kerry.

Searching for a place to sit down, Kerry stumbled over what he first thought was a log and then realized was the bundle that had been slung out of the truck bed.

Looking down with curiosity, Kerry gingerly opened the blue tarp, which he expected to contain the remains of a deer poached two months before the opening of hunting season. Instead, a man's lifeless eyes stared up at him.

### Chapter 44

"Hi honey. Have you been having a fun weekend?" Jane May Malone's voice was too bright and too cheery for this time in the morning. Whatever time in the morning it happened to be. Gracie blearily glanced around David's bedroom but couldn't see any clocks as she pulled his comforter over her new pajamas and tried to focus on what her mother was saying.

"Hmmumph?" she asked.

"Did I wake you up?" Gracie's mother asked, her lilting Southern purr echoing through the phone.

"Mmm hmm," Gracie murmured.

"Were you out late last night?" She asked. "It's already eleven o'clock."

"Mmm. Kinda." Gracie debated rolling back over and going to sleep, but then remembered where she was and why she was staying there. She forced herself to focus on her mother's voice.

"What were you doing?" Jane May asked.

"Went out with a friend," Gracie said evasively, remembering David's instructions to keep her story as close to the truth as possible.

"Where did you go?" she asked.

"Itali-," Gracie caught herself before she named the local, family-owned restaurant. "Italian place. I don't remember the name of it."

"Did you go with someone from the dorm?"

"No." Gracie wished her mother would quit asking so many questions. "Just a friend."

"Oh, well, are you and your roommate getting along better?" Jane May asked.

"No, she still hates me," Gracie sighed. "Is this twenty questions or something?"

"No. I'm just worried about you. I couldn't get a hold of you all day yesterday." Jane May sounded like she was in a good mood, but Gracie knew better than to trust it.

"I'm fine, Mom. Just busy."

"Well, that's about what Addison said too. He thought that you were probably just on a date and that I shouldn't worry."

Gracie didn't know whether to be grateful to her brother or to go get in David's truck, hunt Addy down, and strangle him.

"Gracie?" Jane May's voice echoed through the line. "Were you on a date?"

"It wasn't a date, Mom," Gracie said patronizingly. "I just went out to eat with a friend. I hate the food here. The dining hall doesn't season anything."

"A guy friend?" Jane May was being extremely pushy. As usual.

Gracie wondered what else Addison had shared with their mother. She sighed, trying to decide if it was more trouble to manufacture a guy out of thin air or just tell her it was a girl. Either way it was a lie, Gracie hadn't had a social life since leaving Possum Creek. "Don't worry about it."

"Well, I'm your mother. I need to know if you're seeing somebody." There was an all too familiar hint of disapproval in her voice.

"I'm not," Gracie said flatly. She wondered how David was planning on fixing her relationship with Cal. He wasn't exactly known for his sparkling social skills or tactful delivery of information. Gracie wondered how many more of his bones were going to get broken while he tried to explain to Cal why, exactly, they had intentionally lied to him.

"Oh. You're sure?"

"I would know, wouldn't I?" Gracie growled.

"Okay okay. I'm sure you would tell me if anything serious was going on. I worry about you being so far away from home. I know that's silly, of course. You made the best decision you could have made when you decided to go away to college. I'm so glad you're at State University and not just hanging around here, wasting your life at Callahan Community."

"There isn't anything wrong with Callahan Community." Gracie didn't like where this conversation was headed. "Addison graduated from Callahan."

"Addison is wasting his life," Jane May Malone sighed deeply into the phone. "You should have seen him yesterday. Covered in sweat and dirt from head-to-toe, his hair going in every which direction. It's so shaggy it's hanging in his eyes like he's a sheepdog. Chain smoking like cigarettes are going out of style. I told him he needed to go home and take a bath. He told me he didn't have time."

"Sounds like Addy." Gracie had noticed her brother looked pretty rough yesterday, but she wasn't about to admit that to Jane May. The woman was always looking for something to pick at.

"Addison is a washed-up loser, Gracie. You don't know how much it pains me to say that, but it's the truth. He threw away his career in the Navy to come home and play in the woods with his buddies all day."

"He's the game warden, Mom. It's his job."

"He's a bum with no motivation and a job my brother handed to him on a silver platter," Jane May snapped. "I want you to know that I'm proud of you. I'm so relieved that you left this town and are going on to make something of yourself. Don't take this the wrong way, but I hope you graduate college and never come back here except to visit."

"I miss Possum Creek." Gracie never knew what to say to her mother when she got this way.

"You shouldn't. There is nothing here for you. I know you miss Calvin, but breaking up with him was the best choice you could have made for your future. I was so afraid he would drag you down and keep you here forever, barefoot and pregnant in the yard. I know you don't agree with me, but Cal Walker is no better than your brother. Loving him would keep you trapped in this small town hellhole. You have so much brighter of a future without him."

"Mom, I've got to go."

"Oh Gracie, don't take what I'm saying the wrong way. You've made the right choices for your future."

"Really?" Gracie knew she should keep her mouth shut but she just couldn't do it. "Because I think I've made a huge mistake."

"You've been talking to your brother again, haven't you?" Jane May's tone of voice was decidedly less friendly. "Gracie, don't you dare let him talk you into coming home. I know he misses you and you miss him, but he isn't looking out for your best interests when he tells you he wants you to leave college and move back here."

"Addison hasn't told me to come home."

"Are you so sure? Because he's told me he thinks it would be best for you to come home. He said those exact words to me yesterday. He said he thought you needed to come home."

"Did he really?" Gracie unexpectedly felt her eyes tear up. She loved her big brother so much. Personality flaws aside, he was the best brother a girl could ask for.

"Yes. Don't listen to him. He's trying to convince you to make the same bad choices he did. He doesn't have your best interests at heart, Gracie. He's just lonely and bored. I don't think your brother knows what to do with himself since he doesn't have you to take care of anymore. He's been lost since you left for college."

David walked into the room. "Time to rise and shine, sunshine."

Gracie put her finger up to her lips and shook her head at him, gesturing for him to be quiet. "Mom, I have to go."

"Who was that?" Jane May's tone had gone from lecture to suspicious parent in two seconds flat.

"Just a friend, Mom."

"A friend who just walks right into your room?" Jane May's disapproval radiated through the phone.

"The door was open." Gracie wasn't technically lying. David leaned against the door-frame and rolled his eyes. "I love you. I'll talk to you later. Tell Daddy I miss him."

"Boys shouldn't be just walking right into your room. It's not appropriate. Oh God, Addison's loose morals have probably rubbed off on you. I shouldn't have let you spend so much time with him and his friends when you were younger. You have all the wrong ideas about-."

"Love you. Goodbye." Gracie cut her mother off and quickly hung up the phone. She flopped backwards on the bed and pulled the comforter over her head.

"Jane May?" David asked.

"Who else would spend 10 minutes telling me how much she loves me, followed by an explanation about how the worst decision I've ever made in my life was actually the best decision of my life? She decided to tell me how she's glad Cal and I split up and then called Addison a loser."

"Yup. Sounds about normal." David walked over the bed and sat down on the edge next to Gracie's feet. "I never have liked your Mom."

"Me neither," Gracie admitted. "I mean, I love her. I just don't really like having to talk to her. I don't think she likes me much more than I like her."

"Your Mom doesn't like anything or anyone. She hates me. She hates Cal. She hates every girl Addison has ever dated. I think she's part of the reason he whores around with everything in town. It doesn't matter who he's sleeping with. No one is ever going to be good enough for Jane May Malone."

"I think Mom is unhappy with herself. She's spent my whole life talking about leaving Possum Creek, going back to college to become an nurse practitioner and moving to a city. Dad won't go."

"Your Dad is never going to go anywhere. I can't remember the last time I saw him get out of his recliner."

"Me neither." Gracie took a deep breath and then sighed. "I'm afraid of winding up miserable the same way they are. Sometimes Cal and I remind me of my parents.

"You have to stand up to Cal sometimes, Gracie. If you don't, he'll run you the same way that Pappy runs Possum Creek."

"Last time I stood up to Cal, I lost him." Gracie felt a spurt of fresh tears blossom behind her eyelids. She hurriedly wiped them away. "He's stuck in his same old rut, doing whatever it is that he does. I'm spinning my wheels in his rut and getting nowhere fast. I tried to explain how I felt to him, and he blew up in my face."

"Oh, I think Cal's fixing to get himself out of that Walker Hardware rut." David smiled sideways at Gracie.

"What do you know that I don't?" Gracie asked.

"I'm not telling you. It was a private conversation."

"You're such an ass, David." Gracie shook her head at him. "Mom is going to be royally pissed when she finds out I'm dropping out of college and moving home. I'm not looking forward to telling her. Do you think I could just kind of let her find out on her own?"

"You're dropping out?"

Gracie nodded. "I can't go back, David. I realized that last night. I'm never going to be able to face Kelsey. I don't want to try. I killed Brett. I can't just go back to class Monday morning and act the same way I did last Friday before any of this mess happened."

"Gracie, that's exactly what you're going to have to do." He grimaced at her, placing one hand on her leg. "I'm sorry kid, but you don't have a choice."

"I'm getting sick to my stomach just thinking about having to walk back into that dorm." Gracie crossed her arms over her tank top and tried not to cry. A knot of dread had been growing in Gracie's stomach since she'd been woken up by her mother's call. It continued to expand and tighten with every minute that passed. "How am I supposed to face my British Literature class tomorrow? Should I just sit there and listen to everyone wonder where Brett is when I'm the only one who knows the horrible truth?"

"Pretend you don't know the truth," David said with a shrug. "Just push everything that happened during the last three days out of your mind."

"You say that like I could forget I'm a murderer." Gracie shook her head at him miserably. "Between Brett and Cal, this was the worst week of my life. And believe it or not, I actually didn't think things between me and Cal could get any worse."

"He'll get over it," David said confidently.

"You keep saying that."

"It's true. Cal always gets over it. Believe me, he wouldn't be my best friend if he held a grudge. I'd have pissed him off to the point of no return years ago."

"He always forgives _you_."

"Yeah. He's the only person in town who trusts me," David shrugged his shoulders.

"Not true. Addison trusts you. So do I." Gracie frowned at him.

"You're not in town." David skipped over the issue of her brother entirely.

"I want to be. Please, just let me stay. Don't make me deal with stupid Kelsey." She was surprised to find herself suddenly fighting tears. "I hate college, David. I hate it. I hate the stupid dorm rooms with their stupid community showers. I hate never having any privacy. I hate having to watch every word that comes out of my mouth because people are always listening and incredibly easy to offend. I just hate it."

David nodded but didn't say anything.

"Please? Can we just forget about me going back?"

He shook his head no. "It would cause too many problems."

"Like what? What problems?" she asked.

"The cops are going look for your boy," he said calmly. "From everything you've told me, I'd bet that they're probably going to find out you were supposed to be on a date with him. The cops will eventually realize that you were one of the last people to see him."

"They're going to find out about my date with Brett whether I'm at school or in Possum Creek," Gracie said softly.

"Think about it, Gracie. It's bad luck to go on a date with a guy the night he disappears off the face of the planet. But luck is luck. It's hard to prove malice over luck." David drummed his fingers against the old steering wheel. "If you go home, it's going to look suspicious. Especially since you didn't take your clothes or your car with you."

"We can go get my stuff."

"Uh huh. If you were a cop and one of your suspects immediately packed up her shit and hauled ass 200 miles away a couple days after the crime, wouldn't you be a whole lot more suspicious about her?"

"I guess I already knew that." Gracie sighed and slumped against the headboard of the bed. "You think my alibi is solid right now?"

"Unless there's something we don't know about." David paused for a moment and then nodded. "Yeah, I think it's solid. Whatever you do, don't vary from it. Make sure you tell the same story every time. We can't afford to have people asking too many questions."

She ran her fingers across the edge of the worn comforter. "I really just wish I could turn back time."

"You and me both." He held out one arm to her. She hesitated for a minute and then scooted across the bed so that she was pressed against his side. "Right now you don't have a choice, and I don't have a time machine. Finish out the semester. Let this shit blow over. If you still don't want to be at State, I'll come and get you myself. Okay?"

"You will?" she asked, surprised.

He nodded. "I will. I promise."

"Thank you," she said. "For everything, really. I love you."

"I love you too, kid."

### Chapter 45

Addison pulled into David's driveway while Gracie was loading the Toyota for the trip back to school. He was wearing a regular t-shirt and blue jeans. He had a plate full of food wrapped in aluminum in his hands. He handed the plate to Gracie. "Granny Pearl's baked chicken, creamed corn, green bean casserole and peach cobbler," he explained. "I figured you were probably in the mood for some home cooking after spending the weekend with David. Sorry SOB can't cook to save his life."

"I know," Gracie was glad to see her big brother. Her little chat with their mother had made her feel a lot better about Addison. "The fridge contains beer, lunch meat, string cheese sticks, and pickles."

"Don't eat the pickles. They've been in there for six years." Addison had both hands stuffed down in the pockets of his jeans. He was watching her intently as she took the food and sat down on the edge of the porch with it.

"Oh God, don't tell me that. If I'd known that I'd have thrown them out while I was cleaning the rest of the house."

"You cleaned the house?" Addison blinked at his sister in shock. He wasn't sure what surprised him more, that Gracie had actually cleaned or that David had tolerated someone else messing with his stuff.

"She sure as hell did. It's so damned clean I barely recognized it when I came back yesterday," David grumbled as he came down the porch steps, carrying a basket of car-related fluids. He walked over to the Toyota and popped the hood.

"Came back?" Addison raised his eyebrow at David.

David didn't respond, staring at the dipstick for his engine oil as if it were about to reveal the secrets of the universe.

"From getting the wrecker out of the mud," Gracie filled in awkwardly. "I cleaned while I was waiting on David and Cal to come back."

Addison shot her a look that said he wasn't buying a word of it. The more Addison thought about what David had told him the day before, especially the part where he and Gracie had been involved for any length of time, the less likely it seemed.

For the life of him, Addison couldn't figure out what the two of them were hiding that could possibly be worth destroying Cal's trust in them in order to protect. Addy was willing to bet his life it had nothing to do with love, or sex.

He decided to test that theory when David walked back into the house a moment later to get another quart of oil for the Toyota.

"You need to tell me what the hell is going on." He didn't waste time on the niceties of conversation. She opened her mouth to speak but Addison held his hand up to stop her. "Before you say a word, I'll go ahead and let you know that I don't believe you and David are sleeping together. I know you. I know David. There ain't no way either one of you would do that to Cal. Especially not in secret for six months."

Gracie hesitated and then she straightened her shoulders and gave him a smile he knew was fake. "Cal believes it."

"Cal's not thinking straight," Addison replied. "He's letting his hurt feelings stop him from seeing anything that isn't right in front of his face."

"He's acting like a total ass," Gracie replied as she picked a piece of chicken up off the plate and bit it. Juices ran down her chin and she wiped them away with the back of her hand. "You didn't bring me any napkins," she muttered.

"Use your shirt," Addy said, rolling his eyes at her. "He's not the only one acting like an ass. You and David are doing a pretty good job of it as well."

"We're not trying to," Gracie admitted with a frown. "Look, Addy. I can't talk about it right now, okay? I swear, I just can't."

"Why not?" Addison pressed the issue.

"Because I told her not to," David came back outside with another quart of oil for the Toyota and a funnel. "This is between me and Gracie. You're not a part of it."

"What? You two have some kind of a plan for- hell, I don't know what y'all would be planning." Addison was truly baffled. He leaned against the hood of the Toyota. "Just tell me what's going on."

"No." David stuffed the funnel into the engine. "The less you know, the better off you are."

"Why?" Addison asked. "Is this some kind of a crazy plan to get Cal and Gracie back together?"

"No," Gracie said.

"Yes," David said at exactly the same moment. They frowned at each other. Gracie shrugged her shoulders and went back to eating her chicken.

Addison put his hands on his hips and glared at them. "Talk, dammit."

David finished adding the oil and closed the hood. "Fine. You nailed it, Addy. We think that the reason Cal hasn't pulled his head out of his ass and asked Gracie to get back together with him is because he still thinks she's going to come back to him on her own. He doesn't think she'd really move on. We decided to see if we could shake him up a little bit. We're hoping that he'll get his act together if he thinks I've stolen the love of his life."

"Wow." Addison rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He was thinking about growing a goatee. "I don't really think that sounds like a very good plan."

"You have any better ideas?" David asked.

Addison thought quietly for a couple of minutes and then shook his head. "No. I just don't think your plan sounds like it's going to work."

"I think you may be surprised," David grinned at Addison and then patted him on the shoulder. "We've got to get going. It's going to take me three hours to get her back to up school and another three hours to get back. I ain't looking forward to that drive."

"I bet not. I'd go with y'all, but I'm still on call." Addison scowled down at the radio on his belt loop. "I hate being on call."

"You'll survive." David gestured for Gracie to get in the truck. "Come on kiddo, we've got a long ride ahead of us. It's time to go."

### Chapter 46

"You want me to let you make an arrest based on what you thought you saw from a quarter of a mile away in the dark?" Sheriff Frank Chasson crossed his arms over his broad chest and gave Kerry a skeptical look that made him feel about two inches tall.

"I know what I saw Sheriff," Kerry said timidly. The dead man's name was Benjamin Gomez. His prints had brought up what little information existed about him when Kerry had scanned them into the national system. Gomez was fifty-three years old and his police records, which consisted of a handful of arrests for loitering and petty shoplifting, listed his address as unknown.

"You saw a truck," the Sheriff replied.

"I saw an 80's model Toyota," Kerry clarified. "The coroner said Gomez had been stabbed fifty-seven times by a Buck knife with a four inch blade."

Kerry had asked the man how he could possibly know the make of the knife. Callahan County didn't have the resources to attract the best of the best when it came to forensics and Kerry didn't want some wanna-be CSI in investigator from the local funeral home screwing up his case by making too specific of claims.

The short, fat little mortician had immediately handed him a Ziploc baggie. It held a four-inch long blade with 'Buck' engraved on it. The blade of the knife had broken off the handle when it had hit Gomez's femur.

"You saw an 80's model Toyota," Frank Chasson repeated. "How many trucks do you think Toyota manufactured in the 1980's? A couple million?"

"Well, there aren't that many in Callahan County," Kerry said.

"No, probably not. But you're assuming there's only one and you want to make an arrest based on that assumption."

"I saw the driver," Kerry told him.

"You saw someone. Could you pick them out of a line up based on what you saw the other night? There wasn't much of a moon last night."

"I. Uh. Oh, well, no. But-."

"But nothing. You've had plenty of law education. More than enough to know damned well you don't have probable cause." The Sheriff scowled at Kerry.

"But sir, it's a lead. We do have a dead body here. We need to solve this man's murder." Kerry didn't understand taking the life of another human being, period. He'd gone into to criminal justice because it was the only way he could think of to make a concrete difference in the world. No human should have to suffer through the kind of death Benjamin Gomez had.

"We need to make sure he was murdered first," Sheriff Chasson replied.

"But I saw him dumping the body," Kerry sighed and answered his own comment before the Sheriff got the chance. "Body dumping and murder are different crimes. Yeah, I know."

"You're an intelligent young man, Kerry. At least that's what all your transcripts say. Use all that knowledge you've got stored inside your noggin to make a real case. We go in and make an arrest based on a single eyewitness account of a truck that looks similar to our suspect's truck being in the area but with no other evidence. The worst lawyer in the state will still have him out in fifteen minutes." The Sheriff studied Kerry with benevolent eyes.

"I'm going to assign you this case, son. I want to see what you and all those fancy degrees of yours can do, but you've got to do it right. Right now all you've got is a quick glimpse of an old truck. We need more than that. We need to know who this dead fella was.

I've lived in Callahan County my entire life and I ain't never seen him before. That's important. We need to know where he's from and how he got here. We need to know if he was alive or dead when he got here. The medical examiner should be able to tell us that.

We need to figure out why someone would have wanted to kill him, and how they did it. Then you need to worry about who did it.

I know you think it was David Breedlove, and don't get me wrong he's probably a decent suspect. David has a nasty temper and a habit of bending, if not outright breaking, the law. He drives a truck similar to the one you saw. He's definitely a possible suspect. You should question him, but you've got to keep your mind open and work the case."

Kerry knew the Sheriff was giving him good advice, but he couldn't shake the feeling he was finally about to bring his arch-enemy to justice. David had teased, tormented, and harassed Kerry his entire childhood. He'd dreamed of the day he would get even with David for throwing him onto the football field naked in the middle of the homecoming football game.

And now he'd set himself up for the fall.

Kerry nodded at the Sheriff. "Don't worry, I'll do this right. I don't want to take any chances of our murderer getting set free because I was too eager."

"Good boy," Sheriff Chasson said and held out his hand. "Let me know if you have any questions or need any advice, I'm here to help you."

Even as he shook the Sheriff's hand and told him he would work hard to be a fair investigator, Kerry was dreaming of hearing a cell door slam shut behind David Breedlove.

## Don't Miss

HISSY FIT

## A POSSUM CREEK NOVEL

## (Book #2)

## NOW AVAILABLE

### Chapter One

"I feel sick." Gracie stared up at the massive archway that lead through the courtyard. Colloway Hall was the largest underclassmen dorm for women that State University had. Gracie wasn't looking forward to going back inside. She twisted sideways in the front seat of the Toyota. "I can't do this."

"You'll be fine." David wasn't smiling, but he wasn't frowning either. He looked calm, if not relaxed. He pulled a pack of gum out of the pocket on the front of his t-shirt and handed her a thin stick. "Chew this until the urge to barf passes."

Gracie took the gum in trembling fingers. "Why does Brett's death seem so much more real now than it did this morning?"

David shrugged and pulled a pair of dark sunglasses down over his hooded green eyes. He smiled at Gracie. "It's show time, Gracie Jayne. Put on your big girl panties and get out of the truck."

"I don't-."

"Stop. Just stop. The time for changing your mind is over. You made your choice when you shot Brett and didn't call the cops." David reached across the cab of the truck, taking her chin in one hand. He pulled her close to him. "You made your choice and now you have to play the part. You can't run away right now if you want to be able to walk away permanently. If you want to claim you don't know what happened to Brett, you're going to have to live your life like you never watched him die."

"I'm too scared," Gracie whispered.

"Don't be scared," David leaned into her. His lips were less than an inch away from hers. She could taste his breath on hers. "You've just spent an amazing weekend with your boyfriend, remember?"

Gracie didn't know what else to say, so she closed the distance between them and pressed her lips against his. His lips were soft and tasted like cinnamon chewing gum. He didn't pull away when she pressed her tongue in between his teeth. Instead, he opened his mouth to welcome her. She slid across the gear shift of the truck, focusing all her nervous energy into kissing David so hard that neither of them would be able to breathe. He slipped his hands down her shoulders and around her waist, pulling her closer.

Someone knocked on the window of the truck.

"What the fuck?" David pulled back away from Gracie abruptly.

Gracie cracked open one eye and peered over David's shoulder. A disappointingly familiar, curly-haired brunette was standing outside the driver's side window of the truck. Gracie buried her head in David's shoulder, seeking shelter in the comfort of his hot skin. "I hate this place. Get me out of here."

David twisted to the side, shifting Gracie onto his other shoulder as he used the hand crank to lower his window. "Who the hell are you and what do you want?" He practically spat the words at the girl who was still patiently standing outside the truck, peering in.

"I'm Patty Possier, Colloway Hall's Senior Resident Adviser." The brunette addressed herself to David with a distinct tone of superiority. "I'm sorry, but public displays of affection are not permitted on or around the Colloway Hall premises. Y'all are going to have to go somewhere else if you want to behave in a sexual manner."

"We're not in Colloway Hall, Patty. We're in our own truck." Gracie pulled away from David so that she could glare at Patty Possier, a self-righteous thorn in her side since the day she'd set foot on campus.

"You're in the parking lot," Patty said patiently. She appeared slightly embarrassed but Gracie didn't care. Brett's death wasn't the only reason she was less than eager to return to dorm life. "All school buildings and property are considered family-friendly environments. No sexual behavior of any kind will be permitted in any public area. The student handbook clearly states-."

"I definitely don't care about the student handbook." David cut Patty off.

"It doesn't matter whether or not you care about the handbook," Patty peered into the truck, "As long as y'all are students here you have to follow the rules."

"Patty, don't take this the wrong way, but I don't care about stupid dorm rules. I'm 18 years old and I can kiss whoever I want, wherever I want." Gracie laced her fingers back through David's. "If I want to make out with my boyfriend in the cab of his truck, I'm going to."

"Not on campus, you won't." Patty seemed to remember who she was supposed to be and what she was supposed to be doing. "Gracie, I don't want to write you up but I will."

"Write her up for what?" David slid the sunglasses up onto the top of his head, narrowing his eyes at Patty. He put one arm across the edge of the truck's window, giving Patty a preview of the tattoos that covered most of his torso. Patty took half a step back away from the door. She opened her mouth once and then closed it again abruptly. Gracie almost laughed. Almost.

"Inappropriate sexual behavior," Patty replied with a slight hesitation in her voice. "You can either stop making out or drive off campus, but I cannot allow you to continue behaving in a sexually deviant manner in an area of campus that is supposed to be a safe learning environment." She sounded like she was quoting a manual because she was. Patty had a habit of quoting the student handbook anytime she got flustered by the behavior of the girls on her hall.

David turned to face Gracie. "Is she serious?" He jerked his chin in Patty's direction.

"She can kick me out of the dorm for it," Gracie told him. "I told you I didn't want to be here anymore."

"That's stupid," David replied. "Since when are college students not allowed to make out?"

Gracie shrugged her shoulders. Patty surprised them both by answering the question.

"The rule was made so that no one, absolutely no one, will ever feel uncomfortable in the dorm," she said. "My freshman year here, we had a lesbian girl sharing a room with an extremely Christian girl. The Christian girl complained to Campus Housing about how uncomfortable she felt in her own room whenever her roommate brought her girlfriend over. It wasn't the first time someone had complained about being made uncomfortable by other student's sexual behavior. The college's board of directors decided the easiest way to eliminate problems like this was to ban all sexual behavior from public locations."

"Explain again how my truck is a public location?" David didn't look remotely amused.

"You're parked on campus. I saw y'all making out, which means anyone can see you." Patty shrugged her bony shoulders, making her lime green shirt slide to one side. "Look, I'm not trying to make problems. I just want everyone to follow the rules. If someone sees y'all making out here and decides to complain to the dean, I'm the one who has to explain why I allowed this type of behavior to occur."

"You can really write Gracie up for kissing her boyfriend in a truck?" David asked.

"I can. If I catch her again, I will," Patty spoke the words firmly. "Now I suggest y'all either go somewhere else or get out of the truck and go about your business."

"Just go away, Patty." Gracie glared at the other girl. "We'll do whatever we damn well please."

"A written reprimand will go in your student file, Gracie."

It was on the tip of Gracie's tongue to tell Patty exactly how much she didn't care about her student file when David nodded at Patty. He squeezed Gracie's fingers tightly. "I guess we'll just have to behave ourselves then. Can't risk baby Gracie getting in trouble."

"One kiss isn't worth the formal reprimand," Patty told them with a small, smug smile. "You're making the right choice."

"I'm sure we are." David smiled back at her. The smile went nowhere near his eyes.

"Well, now that you understand how to behave appropriately, I'll leave you two lovebirds be." Patty smiled at Gracie again. "Are you coming to our movie social tonight?"

"Avocado facials with 150 giggling girls and a chick flick?" Gracie rolled her eyes as Patty nodded. "Not a chance."

"Suit yourself," Patty said with a small sigh. She turned back to face David. "It was nice to meet you. Have a nice evening."

"You too." David shook his head as he rolled the window of the truck back up and smirked at Gracie.

"Are you starting to understand why I hate it here?" Gracie gave David the most pitiful, pleading look that she could manage. "Take me home. Please."

"If I didn't think the cops would be looking for you by the end of the week, I would." David ran one hand through her long hair, playing with the tips of it. He chewed his lower lip for a moment. "That chick was serious about the no sexual contact policy?"

"Very. Patty writes people up all the time. No one wants to be assigned to Colloway Hall because of her."

Much to Gracie's surprise, David smiled. "You care if you get written up?"

"Of course not." Gracie frowned at him. "When have I ever cared if I got written up?"

"True." David gave her a wicked grin. "Remember when I said that we needed to make sure everyone in this dorm remembered you came back from the weekend with your boyfriend?"

Gracie suddenly had a pretty good idea of where exactly David's train of thought had derailed. "I'm about to get written up, aren't I?"

"Damn right. And believe me when I say you're going to have fun doing it."

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