Something about the way he watched her—wary and irritated and stubborn and most of all silent, silent, so silent—had Lucy’s fingers curling into fists.
She turned, paced, stopped to stare at him, got pissed all over again.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” she asked without looking at him.
He didn’t answer, and that was confirmation enough.
“You knew I’d find out,” she all but accused. It wasn’t a question, didn’t need to be. He would have guessed someone they would talk to would slip enough to make her suspicious.
Why risk it?
Betrayal was a hot, squirming thing beneath her skin, like the maggots that burrowed into corpses. The reaction was irrational. It was nonsensical. But it was there anyway.
Lucy never trusted easily, had learned that lesson the hard way too many times. But Hicks had reminded her of home, with his thick rancher jacket and work-calloused hands, the pickup truck he drove with one elbow propped on the windowsill, his weatherworn face and his laconic drawl. His cowboy hat, his cowboy stance.
So the trust had come, a comfortable, subtle thing that had snuck up on her in only a few hours despite any other warning signs. It came because he was every man she’d grown up with, the boys she’d kissed, every friend she’d left behind for a different life. With the false familiarity ruthlessly ripped away, there was nothing left in front of her but a stranger, a stranger who now was nothing but a mirror reflecting back her own foolish naivete.
That’s where the heat was coming from—resentment, disappointment if she were honest—fueling a simmering flame. And none of it, none of it was useful to the investigation.
She thought about the little moments they’d shared. The stories that he’d told her that had felt genuine. “Rachel’s punishment, when she helped Josiah run on a broken ankle.”
His face went blank like it tended to do when he was hiding something.
“You were punished like that,” Lucy said. God, he could have helped this case so much. But he’d chosen to lie instead. What else wasn’t he telling her?
“We had a complicated childhood,” he said, and she laughed without humor.
“Right, it wouldn’t help to know about that.”
Hicks’s mouth opened, closed. He looked away.
“Tell me now,” Lucy demanded. “Tell me whatever you weren’t going to before. Tell me, and maybe . . .”
You’ll redeem yourself. She didn’t finish because he wouldn’t actually be able to. Even if he spilled his secrets now, he’d still kept them before.
“I don’t know anything, I swear,” he said. It sounded like an absolute lie.
Anger sparked, but she knew even if she raged at him, he wouldn’t break.
So she shut it down, let ice blanket the fire.
“You’re off the case.”
He didn’t shift, didn’t blink. There was no surprise in his brows or the expressive lines by his eyes, his mouth. “Don’t make that mistake.”
Two minutes ago, she would have huffed out an irritated, disbelieving breath. An hour ago, she would have crossed her arms, settled in to be persuaded. Now, she met his eyes, held his gaze for one second, two, three. A long stare that didn’t break.
Then she turned and walked away without another word.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
ELIZA COOK
One week earlier
Josiah served many roles for the Church. He was the voice, the face, the persuader. But Rachel was the backbone.
They’d met when they were kids, though Josiah hadn’t started officially courting Rachel until she’d turned fifteen to his seventeen. They’d been young, but everyone who’d ever talked about them said it was love.
Growing up, Eliza had been grateful for their partnership, the one that looked so flawless to the world but in reality took hard work and patience and faith.
Josiah led because he always had. He was charismatic in a way that sunflowers are, open and honest and lovable for the very fact that they exist. Eliza watched him sometimes, trying to understand his ability to draw people in, to captivate, to entrance.
She would never be like that. And neither would Rachel.
Eliza knew she should feel closer to Rachel, not only because they were related by blood, but because they were so alike. Odd, protective, too harsh for most people, loyal to the core to those they loved.
But there was always something standing in the way between them. Eliza thought it might have been Cora’s ghost, but Rachel didn’t believe in ghosts.
Her aunt had been nurturing in her own rigid, awkward way, not really sure what to do with a grieving six-year-old girl when all she’d ever had were sturdy boys. But Eliza had been used to the warmth of her mother’s arms, and Rachel had nothing to offer but ice. Which was unfortunate because Eliza had shared the affinity toward running cold.
So maybe they’d never really become the family Eliza had hoped for once upon a time, but both Josiah and Rachel had treated her well, had clothed and fed her. She realized that might be a low bar, but also that she had enough experience with the world to know not everyone cleared it.
Eliza watched Rachel now as she bent over the graves in the cemetery, her shiny black trash bag bulging with the dead flowers the congregation left for their loved ones.
It was their Monday-morning ritual, driving out to the cemetery just after dawn so that they wouldn’t be seen. Leaving the flowers that were still fresh, collecting the ones that were rotting like the flesh beneath the ground. Rachel’s back was bent so that she was just a shadow against the sun rising over the mountains in the distance.
Doing the dirty work no one else even thought of. That was Rachel.
Hicks had always said she was impossible to deal with, that if she was angry with you she’d sooner drive a knife in between your rib cage than try to listen to reason. But by now after years of watching Rachel in action, Eliza thought maybe circumstances had forced Rachel’s hand. That maybe life had made her get that tough.
It had hurt, realizing what kind of childhood Rachel and Cora and Hicks had endured. Eliza had always remembered her grandmother as ginger and mint and a soft, slightly accented voice reading from the Bible by candlelight, a welcome bosom for Eliza to rest her head upon.
Eliza had first realized the truth when Hicks and Rachel had gotten into one of their screaming matches right after Cora had died. Eliza had still been too young to really understand, but she’d known to listen, known to keep hidden curled up beneath heavy coats in the hallway closet.
Accusations had flown, ones that hadn’t even made sense once Eliza had been old enough to understand what was said. Angry words about Eliza’s father, about Cora’s death, about the baby that had lived only a few days. Those Eliza had deliberately forgotten.
But the moments she remembered clearly were of Rachel saying she’d always taken the brunt of their mother’s wrath, the moments of Hicks saying he had never asked her to. They had cried then, the pair of them, and Eliza hadn’t realized adults could cry.
It was terrible and painful and wretched, and Eliza had covered her ears and wished Cora had never gotten pregnant again.
Hicks and Rachel had fewer verbal brawls these days. When Hicks came around, he was cool and cutting, derisive and unemotional. Sometimes he would offer Eliza a smile, but she knew he didn’t want Rachel to know they talked. He was protecting her. Just like Rachel thought she was, as well.