Betrayed Read online

  There was plenty of deadfall, but very few rocks. So she started with heavy limbs, pulling two large ones to the grave and rolling them over the edge before going back for more. She tossed in a shorter one that landed crossways, unintentionally making it look as if there was now a wooden cross over his body.

  She was sad to the bone, but crying time was over. His body still wasn't safe, so she began tossing in limb after limb until the tarp was no longer visible, then she rolled the two largest rocks she could manage on top of the limbs. The grave was almost full, and she still had to cover it with the dirt she’d taken out.

  The moon shown witness to her exhaustion as she tossed the first shovelful of dirt down into the hole, followed by another and another until there was no dirt left. Then she began tamping it down with the back of the shovel until her arms were aching and her hands numb. Once she was through, she pulled more deadfall on top of the grave to hide its presence, knowing it would flatten with time. But she’d done it. Damon’s body would be safe here.

  She turned back toward the truck, shining in the moonlight like a rescue beacon when it hit her. She had no idea where she was. She'd lost her brother, but she couldn't lose his body—not forever. With her last bit of strength, she staggered around behind the tree nearest the grave, and without meaning to, blindly stepped off into water. She came up gasping, her heartbeat thundering in her ears for fear she would become the victim of the nearest snake or gator, and dragged herself out.

  "Oh my God, oh my God," she moaned, shaking from the shock, as she felt around for the shovel she'd dropped. Once it was recovered, she began using the edge of the shovel as a knife, chunking off bark until there was a deep, crude version of an X down near the roots.

  X marked the spot.

  She came out of the bushes, pausing to pull a leech off her arm. It didn't look like a grave, which was vital to keeping him hidden.

  Broken in both heart and spirit, she staggered, then caught herself before she fell, and looked around, fixing this place in her mind, accepting that she'd done what had to be done.

  "I love you, brother, but this isn’t goodbye. I'll be back. I'll find out who did this to you, and make them pay."

  She tossed the shovel into the back of the pickup, then slid in behind the steering wheel. She reached up to adjust the rearview mirror, then gasped, shocked by the sight of tear tracks through the dirt on her face. She'd just put her brother in a grave, but she looked like she'd crawled out of one.

  "Go home. It's time to hide," she told herself, so she carefully backed up to turn the pickup around, then took note of the mileage before following the tracks back to an old blacktop road. There, she made a mental note of the mileage again, then sat for a moment, trying to remember if Damon had turned left or right when he left the blacktop.

  Left, it was left.

  She glanced at the sky and then at the time.

  Nearly dawn.

  "Help me, Jesus," she muttered, knowing she had to reverse every direction she remembered to get back to Bluejacket, and turned right.

  Within moments, dawn was happening in front of her, which meant she was heading east. Once she reached the highway, she breathed a sigh of relief. Now she knew where she was.

  She glanced at the mileage again before she turned right and drove south, straight into Bluejacket. She marked the mileage one last time at the City Limits sign, then drove to her house the same way they'd left, coming into their neighborhood from the back way and praying the cops had long since gone home.

  The street was vacant of people. A few lights were on in houses—people already getting ready for work. The thought that Damon would never wake up again was gut-wrenching, but her focus was on just getting inside. The moment she pulled up into the drive, she began to shake. The adrenaline that had carried her through this ordeal was waning. She was about to crash.

  "Steady, girl, steady," she whispered, then grabbed the money from the console, got out, and locked the truck before heading up the steps.

  The cool waft of air surrounding her as she opened the door was so shocking she flinched. She'd forgotten there was such a thing as cool. She stumbled over the threshold, turning both locks behind her.

  When she heard the water running in the bathroom down the hall, she panicked thinking someone was inside. Then she remembered she'd turned it on before she left and staggered down the hall to turn it off.

  The water heater had long since emptied itself of hot water and was running nothing but cold. She was filthy, and wanted to strip where she stood and get in beneath the spray regardless of the temperature, but she still had priorities, and self-preservation was at the top of the list.

  Damon never used banks, so she went back into the kitchen to where he kept his stash. Before she did another thing, she needed to know what she was working with. She opened the freezer, pushed aside the bags of frozen vegetables, and reached for what looked like a box of frozen shrimp. She shook out the contents, added it to the hundred dollars in her hand, and started counting.

  Twice she had to start over because she was blind with tears, but by the time she had it counted, she was seven hundred and ninety-two dollars to the good which was enough to get her out of Bluejacket and into a new life.

  She took the money back to her bedroom, stuffed it inside her purse, and then carried it with her into the bathroom and hung it on the hook on the back of the door.

  Self-preservation kicked in once more as she began to strip. The shock of seeing so many leeches on her was lessened by her exhaustion. Once she was naked, she poured bathroom cleaner into the toilet bowl and began peeling off leeches as she went, ignoring the free-flow of blood from the little wounds they left behind. She quit counting after ten, tossing each of them into the toilet and digging the ones on her back off with the long handle of the shower brush. When she was through, she flushed them and closed the toilet lid.

  She turned the shower back on, grabbed a washcloth, and stepped into the tub, pulling the shower curtain closed behind her. The blast of cold was shocking, but watching the mud and blood washing off her body justified the shock. Ducking her head beneath the spray, she squirted shampoo into her hand and started scrubbing. Once it felt clean, she soaped up her washcloth and did the same thing to her body until her skin was stinging and the wounds left by the leeches had quit bleeding.

  Turning off the water was as shocking as turning it on had been. Now there was nothing to hear but the thump of her heartbeat in her ears. She crawled out of the tub and collapsed onto the toilet seat, intending to just take a breath, but it turned into a sob. After that, she couldn't stop.

  She cried until she was emotionally drained and the pain in her chest was too sharp to acknowledge. She couldn’t afford to cry again. If she did, she knew she would die.

  She got a handful of cotton balls and a bottle of alcohol to begin doctoring all of the wounds left from the leeches, then stepped back into the tub and poured the rest of the alcohol down her back on the little wounds she couldn’t reach.

  After that, she was on auto-pilot.

  She combed the tangles out of her long, dark hair, ignoring the water dripping down her back, and went to get dressed. Clean clothing had never felt so good. Afterward, she paused in the middle of her bedroom, looking around at the dirty clothes and the bits and pieces of things that belonged to her and not the house, trying to gauge what she could take. The reality of leaving Bluejacket was upon her, but first things first.

  She gathered up all of her laundry, as well as Damon’s, and put them in the washing machine, emptied what was left of detergent in with the load, and turned it on. There was no way to know how long it would be before she got to a place where she could do laundry again.

  While the washer was filling, she ran out to the little storage shed in their back yard. Damon had a habit of keeping boxes, and she knew there were plenty out here. She carried what she wanted into the house, and while the clothes were washing, she began packing up their dishes in one
box, the pans and skillets in another. After wrapping up the eating and cooking utensils in dish towels, she put them on top of the dishes and sealed the boxes. By that time, the washing machine had stopped, so she tossed the wet clothes into the dryer and then carried more empty boxes down the hall.

  Somehow she had moved into survivor mode, calmly sorting and packing what needed to go, including all of Damon's clothing. She couldn't leave them behind without alerting people to the fact that he wasn't leaving with her.

  When the dryer finally went off, there was nothing left to pack but the clean clothes. She folded everything and packed them into the last box of clothing, then carried it to the pickup and put it into the back seat. She’d put dishes and pans into the truck bed, knowing if it rained on them as she drove, the only thing that would ruin would be the boxes.

  She popped a couple of her brother's no-doze pills, left the front door key on the kitchen table, then backed out of their yard and drove away. She lingered long enough to stop at Friendly’s grocery for deli food and coffee, then drove away from Bluejacket and never looked back.

  Chapter Two

  Dallas, Texas - Ten years later.

  * * *

  The hot July wind blasted across the dirt-filled lot of the latest build going up in the Talman Estates, while a banner of colored flags tied to a For Sale sign popped and flapped like the business end of a bullwhip at the lot next door. A cement truck was on site, pouring another load of fresh concrete into driveway forms, while the mud crews moved quickly, smoothing it into place.

  A black, Texas-size Lincoln, driven by a man named Roy Beatty, came wheeling into the housing addition. Roy was all full of rage and indignation as he headed for the site where they were working, and when he parked, he got out shouting.

  "Where the hell is Logan Talman?"

  One of the workers pointed toward a group of people standing on the far side of the new build.

  Beatty stomped across what would one day be a beautiful lawn, cursing at the dust boiling up on his alligator boots and fancy suit, wishing he'd worn something cooler. He came to a stop a few yards away, jammed the Stetson down on his head to keep it from blowing away, and shouted.

  "Which one of you sons-a-bitches is Logan Talman?"

  The men stepped back, giving way to the tall, dark-haired woman in work clothes and a hard hat who slowly looked up from the clipboard she was holding.

  "Gentlemen, if you'll give me a minute, I'll see what has this dude's drawers in a twist so he can be on his way." And then she strode toward Beatty with obvious intent.

  Roy Beatty frowned. Even in blowing dirt and work clothes, she was drop-dead gorgeous. However, he hadn't come here to be side-tracked by some long-legged bitch.

  "I need to speak to Logan Talman."

  "I'm Logan Talman."

  He blinked, then remembered why he'd come.

  "I'm Roy Beatty. I own—"

  Logan interrupted.

  "I know who you are. You own Dallas Brickwork."

  Beatty's pig-eyes glittered angrily.

  "Yes, I do, and you placed an order with my company for twenty-five pallets of adobe red pavers. Then I get to work this morning and find out you cancelled the order. I want to know why?"

  Logan walked into his personal space, punctuating her words every few sentences with a finger jab to his chest, which only made him madder.

  "Because you have screwed up my work schedule for the last damn time. You missed your delivery date...again. This is the third order I've given you this year that's been late. I needed those pallets four days ago. I called. Somebody at your office told me there was yet another mix-up, and they were delivered to another contractor. I know how you work. You sell my pavers to someone who wants an order bad enough to buy it above asking price and make me wait. As you can see, I got tired of waiting and went another direction. I'm pouring concrete instead of pavers, and when I need pavers again, I'll be calling your competitor, Jackson's Rock and Brick Yard for product."

  By now, Beatty was furious. He'd never wanted to hit someone as badly as he did this woman, but his mama had drilled the 'boys don't hit girls' manners into him too well to let fly. All he could do was toss out a pathetic excuse for a threat. His face reddened, and then the wind gusted, blowing dirt into his eyes, which made them begin to water. Now he looked like he was crying. It couldn't get much worse as he began to bluster.

  "You can't...you don't...you're making a big mistake!"

  Logan's retort was sharp and to the point. "The mistake was yours. You will not be getting any further orders from Talman Construction. Now get your crooked ass off my property, and don't come back."

  Beatty was still trying to figure out how someone so pretty could be so damn mean, when she turned her back on him and walked away.

  Hacked that she'd not only gotten the last word, but had dismissed him that casually, was embarrassing to a man like Beatty, especially since work all around them had completely stopped, and every man within earshot had been listening. There was nothing to do but leave, hoping word didn't spread about his business practices. He stomped back through the dust to his Lincoln, leaving rubber on the street as he gunned the engine and drove away.

  Logan returned to the conversation with her sub-contractors without missing a beat.

  "So, Hank, when did you say the quartz countertops are going in?"

  And with that, the briefing continued until all of her questions had been satisfied.

  The site managers went back to their respective builds while she spent the rest of the day moving from one job site to the other, keeping track of each crew and the amount of work being done, just as her husband, Andrew, had done.

  She didn't leave the new housing addition until the final concrete truck had dumped its load, and Wade Garrett, her general manager, arrived to relieve her and finish out the evening with the last crew.

  She mulled over the details of the day through five o'clock traffic on the Dallas Expressway, and by the time she got home, the headache she'd ignored all day was ratcheting up into the beginnings of a sleepless night.

  She grabbed the mail on her way inside, tossing it on the kitchen table as the cool air began drying the sweat on her skin.

  And, as she did every day when she got home, she poured herself a shot of whiskey, toasted the portrait of Andrew hanging over the fireplace in the den, and downed it like medicine, then stood for a few moments staring at his face.

  It was Andrew at his best. Blue shirt the same color as his eyes, open at the neck. His rough-hewn features softened by the hint of a smile and the big gray Stetson casting shade. He'd been a big man—a good five inches over six feet—and the only man Logan had ever trusted on sight. At nineteen, she'd lied to him about her age, and married the thirty-year-old contractor six months after they met.

  "Five years wasn't enough. I miss you," she said, and then headed for the shower.

  A short while later, wearing shorts and one of Andrew's old t-shirts, she went barefoot back through the house to the kitchen, poured herself a big glass of sweet tea, and sat down at the table, ice clinking in the glass. She began to go through the mail, separating bills from the junk until she came to a large brown envelope. The return address gave her a start.

  Blue Sky Investigations—the private detective agency she'd hired a couple of months back. Unwilling to 'go there', she set it aside, booted up her laptop, and proceeded to pay the outstanding bills and answer the day's email.

  She didn't think about food until work was done, and now that she'd finished, she was suddenly starving. She took a T-bone from the fridge, seasoned it, wrapped it in aluminum foil, then carried it outside and fired up the grill. It would take a while for it to get hot enough, so she turned an eye toward her pool and the shimmering water reflecting from the sky-blue tile. A dragonfly was dancing above the wind-driven ripples, as if taunting her to come in, and so she did without thought for the clothes she was wearing.

  She swam to keep from thinking
about that brown envelope and the news it might bring, and when the grill was hot enough, she got out and put the steak on a red-hot grate, taking satisfaction in the sound of the sizzle.

  It was just right.

  Shrieks of laughter from her nearest neighbor's children rode the air over her eight foot privacy fence, while smoke from the cooking steak drifted across her line of vision. The sound of their joy cut through her like a knife. Had she ever been that happy and carefree? She must have been, but couldn't remember it, if she had.

  She'd told no one about her past. Not even Andrew, although it was his passing that had given her permission to finally grieve for Damon as well, which in turn, resurrected the rage of his murder and her desire for justice.

  The breeze stirred the scent of grilling meat, reminding her it was likely time to turn it, and so she did. Four minutes on each side, and she was done. She used to cook Andrew's steaks three minutes on each side, and he would have eaten it with less. But she couldn't see blood running on a plate and eat the food it lay on, and she couldn't tell him why.

  She turned off the grill, carried the utensils and platter that she'd cooked with to the kitchen, and came back with a clean plate for her steak.

  The cold air made her wet clothes clammy against her skin, but she spent most of every day in the wind and sun, so she wasn't going to complain. She made herself a salad while the steak was resting, then grabbed the hot sauce and carried it all to the table. She ate for the body fuel it was, rather than savoring it as food.

  It wasn't until she'd finished her meal and cleaned up the kitchen that she picked up the brown envelope again. This time she took it with her into the den along with another glass of iced tea, and settled into Andrew's recliner. It was a poor substitute for one of his hugs, but on most days, it sufficed.