Reunion in Death (In Death 14)

"I did." He straightened his massive shoulders as if taking on weight. "I'm gonna tell this my way, just saying up front I know what I did was as wrong as it gets, and I take the blame and responsibility for that."

"All right, Mr. Parker. Tell me your way."

"She'd slither around the house wearing next to nothing. Crawl in my lap and call me Daddy, but there wasn't anything daughterly in how she said it."

He set his teeth, looked away from Eve, and out over his land. "Her own daddy was a man hard on women, but he next to worshipped that girl, so her mama told me. Julianna could do no wrong and when she did, he blamed her mama. I loved that woman. I loved my wife," he said, stepping back, flicking his gaze to Eve's face before he began to walk again. "She was a good woman, churchgoing, quiet-natured, sturdy. If she had a blind spot, it was that girl. She has a way of blinding people."

"She behaved provocatively with you."

"Shit. Pardon my French. Fifteen years old, and she knew just how to wrap a man around her finger, get whatever she wanted. She stirred up something in me that shouldn't've been stirred up. I shouldn't have let it happen. I started thinking about her, looking at her in a way that damned me straight to hell. But I couldn't stop. Maybe didn't want to, not then. I know right from wrong, Lieutenant. I know damn well where the line is."

"And you crossed it."

"I did. One night when her mama's out at one of her women's meetings, she came into the study, slid on my lap. I ain't going into the details of it, except to say I didn't force her into a damn thing. She was as willing as they come. But I crossed that line, one a man can't ever step back over."

"You were intimate with her."

"I was. That night, and whenever I could manage it for nearly three years after. She made it easy to manage. She talked her mother into going off with friends on a weekend shopping spree. And I lay with my stepdaughter in my marriage bed. I loved her, God is my witness, I loved her in a kind of insane way. I believed she felt the same."

He shook his head at his own foolishness. "Man old enough to know better. I gave her money. God only knows how much over those three years. Bought her cars, fancy clothes, whatever she asked for. I told myself we'd go away together. Soon as she was old enough, I'd leave her mama and we'd go off anywhere she wanted. I was a fool. I've learned to live with that. Harder was to learn to live with the sins I'd committed."

She imagined him sitting in the witness chair at Julianna's trial, speaking in just that no bullshit way. Things, Eve decided, would have gone differently if he had.

"After her arrest, during her trial, she claimed you had raped and abused her, and used that to bargain for a lesser sentence. You made no attempt to set the record straight, to defend yourself."

"No, I did not." He looked down at Eve from under the wide brim of his hat. "Have you ever done anything, Lieutenant, something that shames you so deep it puts fear in your throat and ice in your belly?"

She thought of Dallas, and what lurked there. "I know what it's like to be afraid, Mr. Parker."

"I was afraid of her. I was afraid of what I became with her. If I'd testified about how it was, I'd still have been a grown man who'd committed adultery with the minor child of his own wife. That's about the time I went into counseling, starting working at accepting my responsibility. Nothing I could do for the men she'd killed. And the fact was, it would've been her word against mine. If I hadn't been there at the time, I'd've believed hers."

"Did she demonstrate violent behavior during the time she lived with you?"

"Hell." He snorted out a laugh. "Had a temper like a whiplash, struck out fast and sharp, cut straight through. Then it was done. Easier to see now what I couldn't then. She's cold, right down through the bone. She hated me from the moment I starting seeing her mother. I see that now, too. Hated me in that icy way of hers because I was a man, because I was a man who could step in and have some say over her. So she twisted that around until she had all the say. Then she humiliated me because I was weak, humiliated her mother because she'd loved me. She strutted out that door and left us broken. Just the way she wanted us."

"You didn't stay broken," Eve pointed out. "You rebuilt your life. She'd know that. She's cleaning up old business, Mr. Parker. Odds are strong that you're part of that."

"You think she'll come after me?"

"Yes, I do. Sooner or later. You're going to want to alert your security. Thoroughly screen any new employees at your place of business, at your home. It would be wise for you to speak with the local authorities, as I will, so they'll know who and what to look for."

"That girl couldn't wait to kick the Texas dust off her heels." He looked down at the toes of his boots, shook his head. "Can't see her coming back here to try killing a man who meant less than that dust to her." He blew out a breath. "But I'm sixty-six years old, and that's old enough to know you don't sit scratching your butt waiting for a snake to crawl up your pant's leg. Been meaning to take me a little busman's holiday, go over to Europe and look at some studs. Might do it sooner than later now."

"I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know where you go and when."

He studied Eve again. "You're going to get her, aren't you, city girl?"

"Yes, sir. I am."

"I believe it. But I don't know if anything I've said here's a help to that, and I can't see her wasting time on me. I wasn't the first for her."

"How do you know?" Eve asked.

"She wasn't a virgin when she slid on my lap that night. At least that's one sin off my plate."

"Do you know who she'd been with before you?"

Parker shifted his feet. "Telling tales on myself, and telling them on somebody else—"